


the ballad of the wandering knights

by mayerwien



Series: a collection of fics where the author said fuck you to her adhd [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Reddie Fairytales (IT), Road Trips, Soul-Searching, fairytale AU, fantasy road trip AU, kind of????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28453197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: “You have enough who are trustworthy here to counsel you on manners of state,” Edward said, “but I—I feel I am called elsewhere.”Beverly, his queen and his friend, looked at him then with a bittersweet understanding. “I would not deny you your request,” she said. “But neither am I so keen on letting you go alone.”“Oh, but he shall not be alone.” Richard had vaulted to his feet and strolled over, and now he clapped a heavy hand on Edward’s shoulder. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: a collection of fics where the author said fuck you to her adhd [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913902
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	the ballad of the wandering knights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestexists](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestexists/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the seventh knight's tale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317150) by [celestexists](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestexists/pseuds/celestexists). 



> Okay, let me explain.
> 
> When Ceece posted her Bevkay fairytale au, I devoured it on the spot and then immediately cried buckets and had to take a long walk in my driveway to calm down. And then after I had calmed down, I was like, THIS IS MY VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY. And then the next day I sat down and wrote the opening scene of this.
> 
> SO. This has been a long time coming, but finally—this is a spinoff of [the seventh knight’s tale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317150), which I highly recommend you read first, as this fic takes place directly after it, but mostly because it’s so mind-smushingly good and it DID make me weep more than once in real life. The nerve.
> 
> Also, (waves at Ceece) surprise, mydude! I hope you don’t mind that I rolled around in your playground a bit; I tried to keep most things where you left them. This did get WAY out of hand but it was one heck of a ride for me (and Edward), so thank you for building this kingdom in the first place. I love it so, and I hope you enjoy this next adventure. <333

_Love without fear and trepidation is like a fire without flame or heat, a day without sunlight, a comb without honey, summer without flowers… Whoever wishes to love must feel fear; if he does not, he cannot love._

\- Chrétien de Troyes

_I’m now a horse without a race_

_I will gallop where I please_

\- Tomo Nakayama, “Horses”

\-----

Once upon a time, there were two brave knights. They left the castle together to go on a long and dangerous quest—but when it came time to return, they did not return together.

Actually, no, sorry, that isn’t right.

Let me start again.

\---

After Queen Beverly the Dragonslayer was crowned, she melted down her father’s cruel throne of gold, and redistributed his hoarded wealth throughout the kingdom. She reformed the King’s Council, which Marsh had dissolved during his reign—but it was called the King’s Council no longer. “The Council of Derry,” she announced at her coronation, as she called forth the representatives of every duchy, fief, and village. “For they serve the people, not the crown.”

As a princess, Beverly had been loved for her beauty—but as a knight-turned-queen, who stood tall in her blackened steel armor on the balcony of the castle, who walked freely among her subjects and sat to meet their eyes as they told her their stories, she was loved for her strength and her kindness, and the goodness of her heart.

Under their new ruler, the people began to rebuild all that had once been destroyed and left to burn. Sir Benjamin the Noble saw to this himself, and Sir Stanley the Wise set to managing the royal coffers so that none would go hungry again. Sir William the Great and Sir Michael the Gentle took up educating the castle’s new crop of knights, in swordsmanship and book-learning both, so that they might grow to be true servants of the realm; while Sir Richard the Brash, who was handsome as he was clever—and he was very, very clever—plied everyone with story and song, keeping spirits high until the darkest hours of winter gave way to a brand-new spring. The witch Kay, whom the queen loved, remained in the castle by her side, and worked her magic on all that she touched, helping to shed light into the darkest corners.

And as for Sir Edward the Brave, he sat in the royal meeting-rooms and spoke of policy and strategy and alliances, and in the evenings retired quietly to his chambers in the castle’s southern tower. And each night, he woke and descended the staircase, and crossed the moonlit courtyard with a wooden sword in hand—to strike over and over at the battered practice post until his lungs burned, feeling as though the war had not left him at all.

\---

All the windows in the throne room had been thrown open, Edward saw as he entered it. The chamber was flooded with sunlight and birdsong, and the sweetness of the summer air. These days, the throne room was used as a gathering-place more than anything else, and nearly always it brimmed over with the sound of friendly arguments and laughter. The throne itself was a wooden chair set upon the dais, ordinary but for the horse-and-rider figures carved into the back by Benjamin’s careful hands. Currently, a pair of worn boots was resting on the seat.

Beverly was in the center of the floor, engaged in a fencing match with William. She was barefoot, which explained the boots. Kay sat a safe distance away, brow furrowed as she worked a spell on a bolt of silk—while on the dais, Richard lay flat on his back, strumming tunelessly on his lute.

“You cheat!” Beverly laughed, as William smoothly disarmed her of her sabre and sent it clattering to the floor. “Kay, did you see that? Do you not think he cheats?”

“I think, my love, you and the knight commander know each other so well that you no longer find it difficult to read one another’s movements,” Kay said mildly, holding a single loose thread up to the light. “I suggest you not hesitate to use it to your advantage, as Sir William uses it to his.” She caught Edward’s eye and winked.

Beverly turned and saw Edward then too, and padded over to him. A healthy flush was in her cheeks, and her red hair, which she had kept short, was wild about her face. “Do you come to challenge me as well, sir?” she asked, breathing hard and smiling.

Edward swallowed. “No. I have come to request my leave of you,” he said softly, and then he explained what he wished to do.

The smile faded, just a little, as Beverly searched his face with her clear green eyes. “A knight-errant?” she murmured. “Oh, Edward. Where will you go?”

“Old Sulfur-breath is _dead,_ Edward dear,” Richard said lightly, sitting up and plucking one lute string, which produced an unearthly twang. “There are no more dragons to be slain.”

“But there are other creatures that roam still, in the farther reaches of the kingdom,” Edward persisted. “This past season, we have heard rumors of trolls, gryphons, manticores... Is it not my duty as a knight, if these rumors are true, to rid the land of such beasts?” Then he paused. “You have enough who are trustworthy here to counsel you on manners of state,” he said, “but I—I feel I am called elsewhere.”

Beverly, his queen and his friend, looked at him then with what he thought was a bittersweet understanding. “I would not deny you your request,” she said. “But neither am I so keen on letting you go alone.”

“N-Nor I,” William added, his brow furrowed.

“Oh, but he shall not be alone.” Richard had vaulted to his feet and strolled over, and now he clapped a heavy hand on Edward’s shoulder. “I’m coming with you,” he said.

Edward stared. “What?”

“Oh, if the castle can do without you, it can certainly do without me for a season or two.” Richard grinned at Edward, his eyes alight with merriment. “Besides, it will do me good to stretch my legs. There is much in our beautiful little kingdom that I have yet to see, too.”

The back of Edward’s neck prickled, and he scowled back. “And if I said you could not come?”

“Then you would not be over the first hill before I had all of First Company sent out to follow you, and the dogs besides,” Richard informed him cheerfully. “It’s them or me, my dear. The choice is yours.”

Edward was about to argue further, but then he saw that behind the mirth in Richard’s gaze was a determination he knew well—hard as steel, indestructible even in the face of dragonfire. They had sworn an oath long ago, the seven of them, to remain true and keep watch over one another always; and it was by this oath, he felt, that Richard was asking to join him on his quest.

With a groan, Edward threw his hands in the air. “Fine! So be it!”

Richard beamed.

Then Edward turned back to Beverly, and took a deep breath and slowly, knelt before her. “I will return before the year’s end,” he promised her.

Nodding, Beverly laid a hand on his shoulder that he might rise, and once he had, she took Edward’s face in her hands and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. “You have my blessing, and my love,” she told him. Then to Richard, she said with a broad grin to match his own, “I’ll not burden you with having to refuse a kiss from your queen. So instead I say to you, guard him well.”

“I will,” Richard said, with a sideward glance at Kay; and it seemed to Edward then that something passed briefly between them, but he would not know what it was until much later.

On the morning of their departure, the queen and the other knights gathered at the bridge. Michael had given to them a detailed map of the kingdom, which Stanley had marked with copious notes in his steady hand. William had had two sets of light barding made for their horses, and from Benjamin they had a quiver of newly-fletched arrows that would always fly true. The last gifts were Beverly’s, and she stepped forward to present both Edward and Richard with their shields, each bearing the new heraldic device—a fruit tree in full blossom, with the blue of her beloved river forming the bordure.

Edward looked up at them, the people whom he loved, and for a brief moment felt a pang of regret that he could not stay. But even now, the road was beckoning to him—and beyond it, far off in the distance, the tall snow-capped mountains, and the sea, which he had never seen.

“What stories you will have to tell when you return!” Michael said eagerly as he helped secure the last of the packs to the horses.

“And what songs our Richard will collect from every tavern he passes through,” Benjamin added, grinning.

Richard laughed. “Ah, you know me too well,” he said, for he had brought his lute in spite of Edward’s protests.

Mounting his horse, Edward took one last look at them and said in a low voice, “Thank you, my friends. I carry you with me now, wherever I go.”

“You always have,” Stanley sighed patiently.

“And you always will,” William finished with a knowing smile.

Then Beverly raised her hand in parting, and said, “May sunlight and moonlight guide your path, and may the rains touch you gently and your fires bring you warmth. And may the winter winds speed you both home to us safely.”

And so Sir Edward took his leave, and Sir Richard rode with him—down the castle lane, through the gates of the royal city and over the hills, and into the wide world that awaited them.

\---

The dream of knighthood had come to Edward as a young boy on his father’s knee, listening to his tales of Derry’s heroes of old. But that changed one harsh winter, when a plague swept the countryside, and Death came to touch the doorposts of their house. Edward survived, though his lungs were much weakened—but Lord Kasprzak, a minor noble with not much to his name other than the title itself, was not so fortunate, and died in his sleep, leaving Edward and his mother all alone.

After her husband’s passing, Lady Kasprzak thought her only son much too frail for any such thing as becoming a knight. And so Edward obediently turned to his books, and bade himself think no more of it. His mother had always warned him of all the dangers of the world—thieves and bandits, monsters and curses, disease and suffering—and now she watched over him so closely that he seldom ventured outside of their small estate. The slightest change in Edward’s breathing caused his mother to send for the physician, and she had a healer make a cloth charm of strength and protection for his lungs, which he always wore around his neck.

For many years Edward was content to follow his mother’s wishes, such a fear of the outside world had she instilled in him—until the summer of his thirteenth year, when going through his father’s belongings, Edward found the papers bearing their seal of nobility and his signet ring, and remembered one of the last afternoons he had spent with his father, long ago.

“You have the courageous heart of an adventurer, my lad,” Edward’s father had told him as they wandered through the forest—for he had loved the land dearly. “Your grandfather had it, and his father before him. I, I have done nothing so great in my lifetime, nor seen so much as the next valley. But perhaps one day, you will travel to wondrous places where no one has ever been, and do such deeds there to bring honor to our noble house.”

“I will when I am a knight,” Edward had replied, lifting his chin.

His father had laughed. “And so you shall,” he said. “That’s your gift, Edward—you always know how to find your own way.” Then he’d stopped, looked around at the towering trees with no clear path in sight, and said, “Now! Point us home.” And Edward had, leading his father through the forest by the hand until their front door was in sight.

Three days after he turned thirteen, Edward arrived at the castle alone astride their old draft horse, with nothing more than the clothes on his back, and his father’s papers and the ring in his satchel. It would be many years before he returned home again.

\---

They would travel east, Edward said, consulting Michael and Stanley’s map—over the mountain range and then down towards the sea, stopping to aid any who required it, and seeking out wild beasts. Indeed, it was barely half a day’s ride before their first adventure. A manticore had been seen on the outskirts of a small village, carrying away the sheep in the fields, and the villagers feared it would come for their children next.

The knights had never encountered a manticore in the wild before, but Edward knew how to track the beast to its lair deep in the forest. The cave they found was piled high with half-stripped bones, and a pair of mesmerizing yellow eyes stared out at them from the shadows.

“Shield up,” Edward said to Richard, as they swiftly unsheathed their swords. “They have spines in their tails—”

It was at that moment the manticore charged for them with a bloodcurdling roar. Edward saw it heading for Richard, its tail lashing dangerously—and at once his mind went clear, like the hardened surface of a frozen lake. As Richard dove to the ground, Edward threw himself between his friend and the manticore, feeling the full impact of the creature’s body against his shield. He shoved it back, then raised his sword and with a shout, stabbed downward into the manticore’s belly.

Wounded, the creature yowled and struggled, until the fight began to go out of it, and its panting grew more and more labored. Edward had a knife in the pouch at his waist, which he used to slit the manticore’s throat in mercy. A strangled, wet cry bubbled from its jaws, and then the manticore grew still.

The forest was silent once more, but it took a moment for Edward to come back to himself. There was a ringing in his ears, and his breath sliced its way out of his lungs in shallow bursts. Edward forced himself to steady his breathing— _in and out, in and out_ —until he could feel the throbbing in his blood subside.

“Well,” Richard exclaimed as he sat up. There were leaves in his hair. “Wasn’t that exciting!”

“It would have been much _less_ exciting if you’d moved quicker,” Edward snapped, turning on him.

“I ducked,” Richard protested. “And I had my sword. I’m no babe in the woods—well, in the traditional sense, at least.”

Edward looked up at the sky and groaned. “Curse it all,” he said. “Why did you insist upon coming? You could be reclining in state in your manor at this very moment.”

“And leave you to have all the fun? You wound me, Edward, truly.” Richard got to his feet and shook the leaves from his curls, though he was only mostly successful. “Besides, why should I choose to recline in my manor, when riding throughout the kingdom enables me to find far more pleasant places to recline—if you understand my meaning.”

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled, then began pulling out the manticore tail-spines that were embedded in his shield. Each was the length of his hand. Richard shuddered when he saw them. “That could have been my _throat,”_ he said, peering at the dents in the wood. “Edward, my love, you truly are my savior.”

“For what would our songbird be without his throat?” Edward responded dryly, taking his sword and raising it above the beast once more.

They presented the manticore’s head to the village’s headwoman, who nodded at it with satisfaction, hands on her hips. “You’re them, aren’t you,” she said next, her eyes flicking to Edward’s face, then to Richard’s. “The ones who rebelled with the queen to kill the dragon.”

Edward felt something twist in his stomach. “Yes,” he said.

“I remember you,” the headwoman said, and a hard sorrow entered her gaze at the remembering. “We fought with you then, too. Took up barn doors and pitchforks and sledge hammers, we did. Never thought I’d live to see the old bastard gone, and may the Black God have had no mercy left for him.” She spat into the dirt. “Sometimes the worst monsters ain’t monsters at all, or so my father used to say. You did right to do it, and so did Her Majesty.”

The headwoman paused, and looked over her shoulder at her little village. “We lost good people last year, and bitter losses they were. But these are better times now, and we can honor those we lost by working to keep them that way.”

“That we can,” Edward said, and swallowed. “At least, that is what I intend to do.”

The headwoman nodded again, then held her hands out for Edward’s trophy, her expression turning to one of disgust as she took the manticore head by the horns. “Eurgh,” she said. “I don’t know about nailing this one above the fireplace. Anyhow, you’re welcome to stay the night, good sirs. Villagers are right grateful.”

“You are very kind, but we cannot tarry long,” Edward told her. “We make for the mountains, and the eastern sea.”

“Come, Sir Edward,” Richard protested. “Surely we can spend one night in a comfortable bed.”

“One night in a comfortable bed while others may be suffering is a night wasted, Sir Richard,” Edward retorted, his voice raised. Richard frowned, but said nothing more.

“The eastern sea, you said?” The headwoman’s eyebrows went up. “I hear from the fisher folk there’s still rocs living in those cliffs.”

“Rocs,” Richard said, sounding impressed. “Do they really understand human speech, and use their talons to carry shipwrecked sailors to shore?”

“That’s only one story out of many,” was the gruff reply. “All the rest don’t end so happily. Those birds are no laughing matter, so be careful where you go a-wandering.”

Edward promised her they would, and then they went to retrieve their horses from where they had been watered and fed. Richard’s mount, a lively brown-and-white brindled mare, was called Tinker, and she blew into his ear and chewed fondly on the collar of his tunic. Horses were always fond of Richard.

Edward’s horse, on the other hand, was a dapple-gray gelding named Squall, a fleet-footed companion who had seen him through many battles. Audra, the royal horsemistress, had rescued Squall as a colt from an abusive master; but after working several fortnights with him, even had been was ready to claim the horse untameable. Squall had bitten and kicked anyone who approached him, and loathed the saddle and quickly learned how to loosen its girth.

And yet, something about the colt’s fast, smooth gait, and the determined flame in his eyes, had made Edward insist on taking over his training himself. It had taken nearly two seasons, but Squall had finally gentled, for his master alone—not so much to rid him of his impatient nature, but enough so that he at least knew to refrain from biting. It helped, too, that both horse and master loved to run. Patting Squall’s neck as he stamped and tossed his head, Edward reached into the pouch at his waist for a sugar cube.

As they left the village, Richard tied his reins to the saddlehorn, so that he had both hands free to play his lute. _“Oh, but who shall ride in front, and who shall go behind,”_ he sang, horrifyingly out of tune. _“What’s a girl to do when she can’t make up her mind—“_

Edward gritted his teeth. “Gods and goddesses save me.” His skin was still singing from battle, the feeling of hacking through the manticore’s neck still radiating through his shoulders. The sound his blade had made, as it severed muscle and bone.

He curled and uncurled his hands on the reins briefly, then glanced over at Richard and noticed his palms were badly scraped from his fall earlier. Pulling out the small jar of healing salve he always carried in his pouch, Edward handed it over. “If you keep playing like that without attending to your hands, they’ll bleed,” he said.

“Why, dearest, how thoughtful of you.” Richard tucked his lute under his arm and did as Edward instructed, then returned the salve, watching with clear amusement as Edward stowed it back in his pouch. “Is there anything you do not carry in that purse of yours?” he asked.

“It never killed anyone to be prepared. Quite the contrary, in fact.” Edward looked at Tinker’s saddle, where among other things hung a tiny velvet bag embroidered with stars, a mysterious addition he did not recognize. “And what do you carry in yours?” he returned.

Richie hummed. “That is for me to know, and for you to wonder,” was all he said, and then began another song that made Edward endlessly grateful that the horses could not understand human speech.

\---

As dusk fell, they stopped by a lake and found a place to make their camp. Richard strode into the water in search of fish, which caused Edward to shout in alarm and go chasing after him. “Take care where you tread!” he yelled, dropping the armful of branches he’d collected for firewood. “You can’t just go—wandering off—“

“Oh, methinks my lord frets too much.” Richard spread his arms wide at the peaceful lake around them, illuminated by the orange of the setting sun. “What could possibly harm us here?”

“Leeches,” Edward hissed, wading in gingerly and casting his gaze down into the water. “Kelpies. _Sea-serpents.”_

“Does this look like the sea to you?”

“Lake-serpents, then. Oh, bollocks—“ Edward swore as he tripped over a stone and nearly pitched face-first into the water. As it was, he went in up to his shoulders. “Of all the sarding wretched, gods-curst, piss-mired—“ he spluttered.

Richard chortled and picked him up by the back of his collar, like a mother cat picking up a kitten by the scruff of his neck, and righted him on his feet. “It’s a wonder they don’t call you Edward the Foulmouthed,” he teased, while Edward redirected his loud stream of invective at him.

While Richard cleaned the fish he’d caught, Edward saw to the horses and made the fire, then insisted he could pitch the tents himself as well—but struggled stubbornly with them until Richard took over. Edward blinked in disbelief as Richard set up both tents, in the time it took to sneeze and say _gods and goddesses bless._

“You have forgotten I am of the player folk,” Richie said pleasantly, dusting his hands off and admiring his work. “I was helping to pitch tents as soon as I could walk.”

Edward _had_ forgotten; or rather, he didn’t think of it much anymore, the way he had when they’d first met. As a boy, Edward had been foolishly ignorant of the culture of the players—the wandering musicians, tinkers, and troupes of entertainers who traveled throughout the kingdom, and stayed nowhere for very long. His mother had said that the player folk were tricksters and thieves, who carried all manner of disease besides; when their carts and wagons passed through the village, she told him he was never to speak to any of them, nor even linger in the square where they put on their shows. So when Edward had met Richard along with the other pages on his first full day at the castle, her warnings had still been fresh in his mind, for all that he had defied her to be there.

“I know what’s wrong,” Richard had said at supper that night, in the loud, wide hall where all the pages and squires dined. “You don’t want to look at me because you think it’s true.”

Edward felt his cheeks burn as he reached for the bread. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly—though already he had heard whispered rumors about the lowborn player boy, whom the training-master had only accepted because he had the Duke of Wentworth as his patron; rumors that said surely the boy had witched His Grace, for him to vouch for a stranger so.

The boy named Richard shrugged and propped his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his knuckles. His curly hair flopped over his forehead. “It’s not like I haven’t heard it all before. That I lie, and steal, and that I haven’t washed so much as my ears since I was born. That I’m the duke’s plaything—though the word they really use ain’t as polite as that.”

“That’s awful,” blurted out the boy named Stanley, whom Edward had learned was from House Uris. “How can they say these things? Do they say them to your _face?”_ Richard shrugged again.

“The law is extremely prejudiced against player folk,” another boy named Benjamin of Hanscom piped up quietly. “The courts will barely entertain them at all to begin with, just because they can’t provide house addresses for the proceedings. If anyone has a case against a player, no matter how deceitful, they’re almost sure to win it. It’s terribly unfair.”

“My mother—“ Edward began, and then bit his tongue, for already he was beginning to realize it would do him no favors to repeat some of the things his mother had said to him.

“Well, I think it’s c-cruel,” said William of Denbrough. He spoke with a stutter, but his expression was fierce. “And all the g-gossip is cruel, too.”

“Aw, not all of it. I’d reckon one or two of the things you think about me _are_ true.” Richard smirked. “Speaking of which, Edward, my boy—“ and Edward had bristled then, at this complete stranger being so familiar—“you have fine taste in jewelry.”

Edward grasped at his throat. The healer’s charm, which he always wore around his neck inside his shirt, was gone. “Give it back,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Calm down, I just wanted a look.” Richard produced the charm and turned it over in his hand. “This is quite good spellwork, actually. Healing magic’s no trifle. A bit over-fancy, though, if you ask me—any old hedgewitch would’ve done just as good—“

Edward dove across the table at Richard, knocking him to the floor and causing several of the other pages to cry out in shock. “It’s for my _lungs,”_ he shouted, even as the other boys were pulling them apart. “I was _ill_ —if I don’t wear it I’ll—“ Then his breathing had grown shallow and ragged, and he’d felt lightheaded as the panic rose in him like floodwater; but Edward refused to slacken his grip on Richard’s collar, at least not until Stanley had forcibly pulled him away.

Then a soft pressure on his shoulder, and the gentle touch of the charm settling back around his neck. It was the boy named Michael, who looked into his eyes reassuringly. “There. You’re all right now, aren’t you?” he asked. Edward nodded as his chest expanded and his breathing eased, feeling both ashamed of his outburst and indignant still.

To his credit, Richard looked contrite. He was half-sprawled on the floor, and his nose was bleeding. “Trickster Goddess. I’m sorry,” he said, sitting up and wincing. He mopped at his nose with the back of his hand. “To be fair, I wouldn’t have guessed you were ever ill, the way you throw a punch.” Shaking his head, William helped Richard to his feet, and cast glares at the boys at the other end of the hall who had begun to whisper.

Later that night, when they were climbing the staircase to the pages’ wing, Richard caught Edward by the edge of his sleeve. “Listen,” he said, eyes wide. “I really am sorry. Ma and Da always say I trick before I think. But the duke told me I had to learn to behave myself while I was here, or else I couldn’t be a knight. And I plan on being a jolly good one.”

Edward stopped and regarded Richard, properly now without hesitation, and saw what he should have seen from the first—just another boy, who shared his dream of becoming a hero. “I don’t believe them,” Edward said finally, and looked Richard straight in the eye. “The rumors. I think they’re downright stupid.” He stuck out his hand. “Truce?”

A smile lit Richard’s face. “Truce,” he replied, and as they shook hands, Edward was briefly aware of how smooth and unworked his own palm was against Richard’s rough one. Then Richard let go, lifted his hand, and flicked Edward hard in the center of his forehead. “Fox and hen,” he said, and raced up the rest of the steps as Edward gave chase.

As the years went by, Richard would tease Edward about many more things—but never about his weak lungs again, even long after Edward realized he no longer needed the charm, and that perhaps he never had. However, that first night was by no means, their last shouting-match, or their last wrestling-match, and sometimes Edward thought it was a miracle they’d both made it to knighthood at all.

Now, Richard stoked the fire, and turned the fish he’d caught on the spit. “Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit my Da’s talent for cooking,” he sighed, his head drooping comically. “If we are poisoned tonight and we meet one another in the Black God’s court, I hope you will forgive me there, and so save me from eternal damnation.”

Edward rolled his eyes. “Let’s not court danger any more than we have to while we’re questing.” He sniffed at the smoky smell that was wafting over, then paused. “Don’t you ever miss them?” he asked. “Your—birth parents?”

“Oh, now and then.” Richard poked at the fish, his brow wrinkling. “Mostly I wonder what became of my sisters. They were only tiny little things when I left. I wonder if they’re married now; I could be an uncle and not know it.”

“Couldn’t you ever write to them, or...” Edward faltered, suddenly realizing how impossible that would be. “It’s just that you haven’t seen them since you were a child.”

Richard smiled. “If someone in the Family leaves home and sets off on their own, they and their kinfolk simply hope their wagons may cross paths again one day,” he explains. “If I’m lucky, they still tell the children about me. That’s how you keep each other alive, you see. Growing up, you hear stories about all the relatives you’ve never met, and then you pass stories on to the family you start yourself—and that way no matter what corners of the world you scatter to, the memories remain with all of you for generations to come.”

Edward snorted a little. “Well, you have nothing to worry about,” he said. “I doubt anyone who had known you could ever forget you.”

Richard crowed in triumph. “You sweetheart!” he exclaimed, and tackled Edward, who instantly regretted having said anything.

The fish was nowhere near as bad as Edward had feared it would be; the white flesh was firm but juicy, and well-seasoned with some of the herbs Edward had brought. There was also a pan of wild mushrooms, cooked to golden perfection in butter that Richard must have procured from the village somehow. Edward ate in silence and kept meaning to say _thank you,_ but found it difficult to loosen his tongue. Even so, Richard seemed to understand, and simply took Edward’s tin plate and scooped another heap of mushrooms onto it while chattering about all the dishes the cooks at the castle had taught him to make this past spring, and how he once attempted to bake a cake with ten tiers that in the end had required a stack of books to keep upright.

Sleep was a hesitant visitor that night—not because of the hard ground beneath Edward’s bedroll, which he had grown accustomed to after years of border patrol; but for a reason he did not know the true shape of yet, only that he felt the odd, painful fluttering of it in his chest. Quietly so as not to wake Richard, he slipped out of his tent to go down to the lake, and sat there looking up at the silver sickle moon, letting the breeze raise the gooseflesh on his arms and wear at the edges of the restlessness inside of him, until the sky grew light.

\---

The training-master, Sir Philip, had expected great things from the boy William, firstborn of the Duke of Denbrough; for his family was one of the oldest bloodlines in the realm, and one most loyal to the king. Similarly, Lord Uris had written to Sir Philip with stern instructions for his only son. He was too soft, his lordship said, too coddled by his mother, and it would do the child well to be broken in by a seasoned knight.

Stanley had borne the criticism as well as could be expected from any boy of his age, but William knew Lord Uris’ reputation and saw Stanley’s need for companionship, and so made it a point to befriend him where none of the other sons of nobility would. Benjamin and Michael were already close companions even before arriving at the castle, for their lesser-known clans were related—and they too sensed kindred spirits in William and Stanley at once.

Edward, meanwhile, knew little of any of the rest of them, and little of court life apart from what he had read in books, as his mother had not kept up relations with any other noble houses after her husband’s passing. Perhaps it was why, even after they were taken under William’s wing as well, he and Richard came to feel a particular kinship they never spoke aloud. They were known to quarrel about all things under the sun—though Richard, it must be said, was nearly always right—but when they partnered for quarterstaff drills or riding practice, there was a wordless understanding in the way they locked staves and refused to call for respite, and the way they clasped hands to pull each other up from the dusty ground again and again.

If anyone ever wondered at William of Denbrough’s choice in allies, they would remain wondering for the rest of their days—for their bond was not one born of desire for power, but out of mutual respect and trust, and delight in one another’s company. Together, the merry little band trained and studied and dreamed together. Stanley corrected their mathematics work, and Benjamin their history. Richard’s quick thinking and sharp tongue helped them rehearse for logic and argumentation, while William reminded them all of the code of chivalry, in deed as well as in word. On their rest days, Michael led them through the woods behind the castle and taught them to catch fish and swim in the river, and in spite of their bruises and sore muscles, the six friends were happy.

Though Edward’s determination never wavered, he was often frustrated in feeling that he lagged far behind his friends. He was smaller than most of the other pages, and furiously devised techniques by which he could use his size to his advantage. He also struggled with maintaining the proper riding form, as riding was one of the many things his mother had not permitted him to do, and so Edward’s ankles and his spine smarted constantly from their eagle-eyed master’s crop.

“You can’t be so frightened of your own mount, Edward dear,” Richard told him one day, as Edward scowled down at his pony after a long and painful attempt at a canter in the training yard. “He senses it. They always do.”

Edward angrily banished the images in his mind of himself toppling out of the saddle and being crushed to death by his pony’s hooves. “I’m _trying,”_ he said through clenched teeth, rubbing his sweaty, sore hands on his breeches. “It’s easy for you to talk—you’ve been around horses all your life. But while I’m riding, I’m thinking about my spine, and my heels, and where my eyes are fixed, and how I hold the reins, and what to do if I fall and sprain my wrist or turn my ankle, and—“

“You rode all the way here on your own, didn’t you? So you already know you can do it. Can’t you just remember what you did then?”

“That was different,” Edward insisted. Running away to the castle, he hadn’t ridden the horse so much as clung to it in grim desperation, like a drowning man to a raft. If he was going to become a knight, he knew he needed more than the raw will to survive—what he required was the complete and utter mastery of all his abilities.

Edward focused his gaze straight ahead and breathed out. _Heels down. Back straight._ “Again,” he said, and spurred his pony forward.

“Look, you’re not loosened up enough,” Richard commented after watching Edward for several more measures. He demonstrated by easily moving his own pony into a canter. “You’ve got to move with ‘em, see? It’s like dancing.”

“Do I look like I dance?” Edward said darkly.

Richard’s eyebrows went up in mischief. “Do you need lessons? I’m sure that can be arranged—“ Then he caught sight of someone staring at them over the fence, and pulled up, swiveling around in his saddle. “Hullo!” he called.

The one who watched them was a girl about their age, who wore a green silk dress and a riding-hood over her hair. She had evidently been there for some time, her heels planted squarely on the middle rail, her hands wrapped around the posts and her eyes wide.

 _“Richard,”_ Edward hissed through his teeth; for ignorant though he might be, even Edward knew who graced them with her presence. But either Richard did not catch his meaning, or care, for he hopped off his pony and began to cross the yard to the fence. The girl grinned, and opened her mouth to speak—but then from up the hill came the panicked voice of a lady-in-waiting, calling for her.

“Bollocks,” Princess Beverly said clearly, and turned and fled. As she ran back towards the castle, her hood fell back over her shoulders, her long red hair catching the sunlight and streaming out behind her.

Later, when the six boys had gathered in Edward’s room to ease their aches from the day’s training, Benjamin remarked shyly, “The Princess Beverly is very beautiful.” He had taken up whittling recently, and was using his knife to try to make what looked like a cat out of a scrap of wood.

Deep in thought, William looked out the window, to the high, lonely tower that held the princess’ chambers. “V-Very few outside of the castle have ever s-seen her,” he murmured. “The king must l-love her dearly, to want to p-protect her so.”

Stanley inspected the bandage Edward had wound around his arm, and smoothed the edge of it with one finger. “She must be lonely, though,” he said after a while. 

_Lonely._ Edward turned the word over in his mind, as he inspected Michael’s knees and applied some of the extra ointment that he’d coaxed out of the physician a sennight ago. He’d gotten a good look at the princess’ face, just before she ran, and with that bright light in her eyes she hadn’t looked lonely. She looked _ravenous._

Edward wondered how much it must hurt, for the princess to watch the pages at swordplay from her tower window day after day, and not be able to join in if she wished it, or even come by to say hello. How badly the princess might be aching to have friends her own age, and go running across the fields or climbing trees, instead of being surrounded by nursemaids and ladies-in-waiting and the royal guard at every single moment. Edward knew what it was to be kept hidden away from the world under the guise of love, of keeping you safe. What it was to desire something so much, some days you thought you would die for want of it.

He screwed the lid back onto the jar of ointment. “Perhaps we can befriend her too, one day,” he said softly.

“I hardly think there’s a chance of that,” Stanley replied, sniffing. “At best we’ll be assigned to the ramparts beneath her tower—and that’s assuming we even earn our shields, mind you.”

“Ah, our little Lord Uris, always so despondent,” chided Richard, who had flopped onto Edward’s bed and was now kicking one leg out in a careless rhythm. “Miracles do happen. Why, just this morning, Edward got his ankles whacked only three times instead of his usual seven—and if he’s achieved that, then any of us can do anything. Isn’t that so, Edward m’dear?” he added pleasantly, sticking his toes into the back of Edward’s leg. Edward kicked Richard back violently, so Richard stuck his foot into Edward’s stomach next, and Edward pounced.

“Do you really believe that?” Michael asked the rest, pointedly ignoring the scuffle going on behind him. “That...any of us can do anything?”

“Sure,” Richard said around Edward’s elbow, which was in his face. “And wild boars might fly.”

“Well, _I_ believe in us,” William answered, his tone even and his expression serious. “I do. Henry is a brute who k-kicks his opponents when they’re down and b-bullies all the younger pages when nobody’s looking, and Patrick throws his f-father’s name around and thinks he can advance by c-currying favor with his betters. I d-don’t think either of them are what knights sh-should be. But I’ve seen us—w-we all work hard and honestly, and we’ve all g-got brains, and more importantly, w-we’re all _good.”_ He looked at Edward. “Like you, Edward—pardon me saying it, but you’re at m-more of a disadvantage than almost anyone here. But the fact that you k-keep trying, no matter what Sir Philip says, is—“

“Sarding stupid?” Edward grunted as he attempted to wriggle out of Richard’s grasp, craning his head around to try and bite his arm.

“No, Edward,” William said, and then he laughed. “That’s _brave.”_

\---

It was midsummer, the sky such a sharp and clear blue that it plucked painfully at the strings of Edward’s heart, and little dense white clouds rambled across it like sheep. As the two knights rode, they passed through towns and villages they remembered from older days, and were glad to see them flourishing now—the front doors of the houses left wide open, as their owners swept the front steps and hung up the washing. The children whacked one another with their sticks and hobby-horses, while their older siblings argued loudly while hauling their baskets to market. Grandparents sat on the front steps to blow smoke-rings with their pipes, and young lovers stood in the streets to sing troubadour songs underneath one another’s windows. Edward saw them, and still he felt distant from all of it somehow; as though it was something happening in a story, and not something he could take a measure of for himself.

One afternoon, they found themselves passing through a hilly field where several cows were grazing, and where honeybees sipped leisurely from the flowers, as here and there sapphire-blue dragonflies darted through the grass. The two knights were startled, however, when a young cowherd boy came running up the hill to them.

“Sir Edward, please,” panted the boy, and doubled over. “I need your help, sir.”

“What is it?” Edward said at once, hand going to the hilt of his sword as his eyes roamed the field for the source of the danger. Beneath him, Squall snorted and shifted uneasily.

The boy, finally catching his breath, said, “I can’t get the choirmaster’s bull home.”

Edward stopped, perplexed. “The choirmaster’s...”

“Bull, sir,” the boy repeated. He mopped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “I’m very sorry, sir, but he was let out to pasture with two of the cows, and I’ve been watching them a whole fortnight, but now it’s time to bring them back and I can’t even get him to _move.”_

Edward and Richard exchanged a glance. “You may never turn down a cry for aid...” Richard began.

“I know the oath,” Edward grumbled, nudging Squall down the hill. “Come and help, will you?”

“’Twas thou who longed to go a-questing, Sir Edward,” Richard said, bowing his head in mock graciousness. “I am but your humble servant, unfit for such a heroic task.”

The choirmaster’s bull was an old and wrinkled behemoth of a bull, and he looked completely unbothered as he stood chewing in a patch of sweet clover. Richard stood off to the side and folded his arms, grinning, as Edward rode Squall in circles around the bull, shouting and waving his sword in the air. “Hyah! Hyah!” he yelled.

The bull lay down.

The cowherd boy groaned. “Choirmaster’ll box my ears for bringing them back so late,” he said. “And the old thing wanted nothing to do with any of the heifers this summer either, so there’ll be no calves next spring.”

“Ah, lad, that’s not the sort of matter you can help,” Richard said, from where he was now lying on his side in a patch of clover, looking as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “Even if you had an enchanted thread made of unicorn hair, like the one in the tale of the Silver Queen—a thread so fine yet so strong, it could bear the full weight of a grown man when tied only around his littlest finger—you could not pull a bull towards a cow he had no interest in. All creatures have their own seasons, you see, and that means they must move in their own time.”

“Curse the Lady of the Wheat, surely we can get the seasons to move a little _faster,”_ Edward said through his teeth. Dismounting, he stomped over to the bull. “I’ve had enough of you. Go on,” he said crossly, giving the bull a shove.

“Easy now,” Richard said uncertainly, sitting up and eyeing his horns—but the bull merely turned his head lazily towards Edward, as if to say, _oh, you’re still here?_

Edward swore under his breath and pushed the bull harder.

While Richard sat in the grass and told the cowherd boy the story of the Silver Queen and her magic thread of unicorn hair, Edward used his shoulder and threw his full weight against the bull several more times, but to no avail. “Damn your hide seven ways to Sunday,” he shouted finally, adding several choice words that a knight of the realm should have no business knowing. “May the tanner take you. I hope you are turned into a pair of large boots.”

Richard burst out laughing so hard he fell over. “Take care, my dear, you’ll set the poor boy’s ears ablaze,” he got out, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. Indeed, the cowherd looked suitably impressed.

“But it’s impossible, _look_ at him!” Edward spluttered, flinging his arm at the bored-looking bull. “The thousand-year-old obelisks in the northern hills will get up and walk before this obstinate leather doorstop does.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Richard said, and picked up his lute and began to pluck a gentle hymn.

At once, the bull’s ears twitched. He swung his head toward Richard, then heaved himself to his feet, and began to shuffle over.

Edward stared.

“In the stories, the Silver Queen called her unicorn by playing a song upon her silver harp,” Richard explained, patting the bull’s nose as he huffed wetly. “Sometimes all it takes is speaking to the beasts in a language they understand. And I wagered the choirmaster’s cattle would appreciate a well-played tune.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” the cowherd said, eyes shining with gratitude for Richard, which made Edward even more cross. Then the boy looked anxious, and added hastily, “I’ve naught to pay with, but you’re both welcome to sup with us tonight and—“

“Pay?” Richard echoed, looking confused. “You owe us nothing, lad. What on earth do you mean, pay?”

“Some of the old knights took payment,” the boy mumbled, dragging the toe of his shoe through the grass. “Before. Sometimes chickens n’ goats and that. Sometimes other things.”

The two knights traded a look, wordless and grim. Edward felt true anger rise in his throat like bile, and swallowed it down and reminded himself to breathe. “A true knight serves the people,” Edward told the boy, needing him to understand. “We assist those who ask for help, we defend those who have been made powerless, we—we don’t _take.”_

“Cor.” The boy looked impressed again. “Could I be a knight then, sir?”

“Yes,” Edward said before he could think about it. “In our time, it was only sons or wards of noblemen. But the Queen has made it now so that anyone with courage, a keen mind, and a good heart can try for their shield.”

The boy grinned cheekily. “Perhaps I’ll see you at the castle one day, then, Sir Edward.”

“Perhaps you will,” Edward said, awkward all of a sudden. He cleared his throat. “And don’t keep letting the cows gorge on that clover, do you hear? If they have too much, it will make them sick.”

The boy thanked them again, and then whistled to round the cattle up and take them home. Edward and Richard watched as the boy crossed the field and climbed the hill—whistling merrily and kicking clods of dirt aside, his little parade trailing behind him. “The world’s changed,” Richard murmured.

So much, Edward thought. Not enough.

The road through the hills into the next town was long and winding, with bright yellow buttercups growing on either side of it. Looking at them, Edward remembered a time when he’d thought he was allergic to flowers—until Michael had helped prove he wasn’t, slowly introducing him to daffodils and kingcups and wood anemones that he left in a little vase on Edward’s windowsill. The memory filled Edward now with the sudden, impractical desire to stop and pick an armful of buttercups.

As if he’d read Edward’s mind, Richard slowed Tinker to a walk and leaned all the way out of his saddle to pull up a small bouquet. “For you, my sweet?” he asked as he proffered the flowers to Edward, eyes twinkling with merriment.

Embarrassed, Edward returned his gaze to the road ahead. “I think your horse would wear them better than I.”

“As my lord wishes.” Richard twined the buttercups loosely in Tinker’s mane and patted her neck, then took up his lute again and began to serenade them with a long and bawdy drinking song. _“All the grass in my courtyard is shining with dew,”_ he bellowed tunelessly. _“And you’ll hear no sweeter melody than when you stir my pot of stew! Men are swine who’ll part with coin just to feast upon this slop—so when you’re sated, sir, send servants for the bucket and the mop—”_

“Richard, that’s disgusting,” Edward exclaimed.

“Says Edward the Foulmouthed to _me?”_ Richard gasped. “What an honor, sir! _With a hey, and a ho, and a hey—“_

“If you hey and ho at me one more time, I shall strike you down where you stand,” Edward interrupted snippily.

“Another song, then! I shall write a merry tune about all our adventures,” Richie declared. “Long after our bones have turned to dust beneath our effigies in the catacombs, the bards of Derry will be singing the Ballad of the Wandering Knights.” He strummed what Edward assumed was supposed to be a triumphant-sounding chord, and beamed.

Edward rolled his eyes. “I hope not, if this is what it’ll sound like.” They rode on a while longer, Richard picking experimentally at the lute strings, before Edward added, “I do not think I wish to be buried in the catacombs.” He frowned. “When I die, I think...I should like to be buried somewhere flowers grow. In a nice grassy meadow like the ones we’ve passed here. Underneath a tree, perhaps.”

“This is a morbid exercise in thought, my darling Edward.” But Richard was tilting his head, looking at him with a wordless understanding. “To be sure, your resting place would be a pleasant one to visit,” he added. “Your children and grandchildren would sit peacefully in the shade by your epitaph, and think they could hear you ranting and raving in the passing breeze.”

Edward briefly tried to picture such a scene and failed. He glanced at Richard. “And yourself?”

“Me? Oh.” Richard laughed a little. “Do you know, I don’t care much about that sort of thing. When I am gone you can cast my ashes to the wind itself; it won’t be of any consequence to me.”

Something about his answer drew up a hot, unexpected thread of anger from the pit of Edward’s stomach. Pressing his heels in, he urged Squall into a canter until he passed Richard on the road, blinking hard through the sweat that stung his eyes.

\---

The first letters arrived on a gusty afternoon, when they were stopped on the bluffs of a wide river so the horses could drink. Edward nearly jumped out of his skin when the falcon swooped down and dropped the rolls of parchment into his lap, before perching on the cantle of Squall’s saddle, hitching its blue-gray wings and blinking keenly at him.

There were two letters, sealed with red wax and bound up in twine. The first was from Michael, and began, _Dear friends—_

_I wondered how this would reach you, but our Stanley tells me that Merideth (that is the falcon’s name) is as wise as she is swift, and will know to fly to where you are. It seems as good as sorcery to me, but Kay has told me too that wild things have their own magic, the true depth of which we will never understand. Merideth will be able to find you as far as the mountains, so you may write back before you reach them._

_We all hope you are both well, and enjoying your adventures—though I must confess the castle is far quieter in your absence. Just the other day, during a Council meeting, Her Majesty looked around the table and sighed, “It just isn’t as much fun when no one squabbles with you,” to all our amusement._

_As for myself, I am completely occupied with teaching the new boys, who do their families credit so far. They work hard and quarrel amongst themselves about countless trifles, and settle them themselves as well, which reminds me of what we were like as pages. There is one here who would make you a good squire someday, Edward; his mind moves fast as yours does, and he always notices when his companions need medical attention, but his even temper would be a healthy counterweight to your fire. It is a struggle sometimes to get the boys to mind their books, as they long for combat—and truth be told, I think they are eager to impress Sir William the Great. I must confess too, I understand the feeling._

_Is it odd to say that somehow, I never imagined myself as a training-master? For many years, all I could see was the singular path, straight and narrow, of knighthood; of what I thought I must do to bring honor to my family. But I realize now, of course, there is more than one way to be a knight—that there are a thousand different paths we may take, and that often our journeys are so much longer and more winding and full of surprises than we could have possibly expected. I am sure you know this already, however, having set out on your journey so fearlessly. I remain in admiration of you both for daring to forge your own path so, and I know the kingdom sleeps more soundly at night with you defending it._

_Ride safely, my friends, and we look forward to seeing you back for the winter feast. I know I shall be looking forward to the dancing (and the roast turkey), and to Richard’s music, and simply to seeing you both seated down the table from us once more._

The second was William’s, which they would have easily guessed from the hastily scribbled lines and the ink smudges all over the page, if not the sheer thickness of the roll of parchment alone. There were twelve pages all in all, much of it absentminded rambling about the little goings-on at the castle, or random musings on things William had read in books. He also complained about the pages’ awful spelling and how they always managed to hang up the tack the wrong way around; he seemed completely oblivious as to his reputation among the knights-to-be, which made Richard laugh.

William’s letter ended, _Teaching quarterstaff exhausting, but teaching tilting worse. I know necessary but rings too damn small. Do not know how we ever managed. Or my eyes must be going; am feeling my oats. M says I am too young to be feeling any oats but I say I am ensconced in mountains of them. V. busy (and always sore from head to arse) but truth be told am v. satisfied to see our little knights so full of hope._

_Must go now to mark atrocious piles of essays. S very unsympathetic. B keeping us company here in library (getting pear juice all over my desk) and she says to tell you she sends her love. Other B in here to fix wobbly ladder and he sends love too, so I suppose ever more love from me—W._

“Our friends have settled well into their training-master roles,” Richard remarked fondly as he read over William’s letter again, his long legs stretched out on the riverbank. “Who would have thought it? I am glad to hear from them.” He looked at Edward. “Aren’t you?”

“What?” Edward didn’t realize he had been staring moodily at the river until the falcon—Merideth—landed on his shoulder. “Ow! Curse it—” He attempted to shrug Merideth off, but it only made her dig her talons in harder. “Of course I’m glad to hear from them,” he grumbled to Richard.

Merideth nipped his ear hard. _“Ow!_ Begone, you, or I’ll have you for a feather-duster,” Edward snapped, swatting at the falcon, who shrieked piercingly.

Richard leaned over and waggled a piece of dried fish at Merideth, which she took from his fingers none too delicately. “I care not how intelligent the creatures are, Stanley spoils them rotten,” Edward muttered.

He took a scrap of parchment from his pouch and wrote a short letter back to say that they were well, and tied it securely to Merideth’s leg. Balancing the falcon on his arm, Edward flung her into the sky, and they watched as she soared away above the treetops, coasting home on the summer wind.

\---

At his knighting ceremony, which was held at sunset as was custom, Edward had come face-to-face with King Marsh for the very first time. He had feared him before, as all the subjects feared their ruler—but being in his presence, so close, was another thing altogether.

The first thing Edward noticed about him was his eyes. The king’s eyes had strange, narrow pupils that glowed with a fevered avarice, and they were the color of a murky swamp, though they shifted amber in the dying light. When he spoke, his voice had slippery coils in it that sent tremors down Edward’s spine, and when he moved, it was with the sinewy deliberateness of a predator eyeing his prey. King Marsh the Flame was no mere man; of course he was not. No king—or monster—like him had ever come before.

Edward knelt before him, in the pool of orange sunlight, and the king raised his sword—and for one wild moment Edward thought the next and last thing he would feel was fangs closing around his throat, his final breath crushed out of him by a dragon’s powerful jaws. And in that same moment, Edward wondered if he had done the right thing, to swear loyalty to one such as he.

But the king had struck both Edward’s shoulders hard with the flat of the sword, and then rested the cold steel of it on the crown of his head. “I dub thee Sir Edward of Derry. Rise a knight,” King Marsh said, in that slithery voice that held oil and shadow and fire.

Edward had risen, his knees weak and his hands shaking. But he had held his chin high—and when he turned and descended from the dais, his friends, his fellow knights, embraced him warmly. It had been a long and arduous journey, but at long last he had done it. He was Sir Edward of Derry.

As the seasons passed, and Edward and his friends rose in the ranks, high enough to be entrusted with guarding the Princess Beverly herself—Edward thought of the day he would ride up to the door of his childhood home, where he had not been since he was a boy. He thought of how he would finally stand before Lady Kasprzak in his armor and say, _look, Mother. I have become a knight, just as I said I would, more than you ever thought I could be. Have you heard—they call me Edward the Brave._

But even before Princess Beverly disappeared into the woods in search of a witch’s spell, long before King Marsh’s fall—a letter arrived at the castle for Edward from a village physician, telling him that his mother had died suddenly of an illness, alone in her house. They had buried her in the graveyard next to his father, the letter said; at the close of summer, just before the leaves turned red.

\---

“Headed your way!” Richard roared, as the troll came thundering through the trees.

The ground rolled and trembled, and all around them birds shrieked as they fled the branches. The troll was close behind them, and still Edward pushed Squall onward, galloping him so hard it was as though they flew, the forest blurring at the edges of his vision.

“Come on, boy,” he gasped, “come on—“ And then Squall reared sharply, for they had run up against the sheer face of a massive rock, part of a formation too wide to circle and too tall to climb.

They were trapped.

Squall whirled, straining against the reins in panic, and Edward’s heart plummeted. The troll’s beady eyes were fixed on them, and it lurched towards them, hands outstretched.

Edward drew his sword, but the troll’s acrid breath was like a fog, dampening his thoughts. Snarling, the troll opened its mouth wide, revealing yellowing canines that could undoubtedly crush a man’s neck. In the time between heartbeats, a dead silence dropped over the forest like a veil, and Edward’s mind shuddered to a halt—

And then a stone came sailing out of the trees, striking the troll squarely in the back of the head. “Back, you sarding swamp-boulder!” Richard yelled, his voice ragged. “Look here! It’s me you want!”

With a furious rumble, the troll turned towards Richard, and it was enough. Edward and Squall dodged the beast’s legs, which were as thick as tree trunks, and ran back the way they came.

“To the meadow,” Richard shouted, as Tinker sprang into a gallop alongside them.

Once they were clear of the trees, Richard grabbed the coil of rope looped around his pommel and hurled one end to Edward. He caught it and veered sharply to the side, so the rope was pulled between them as they rode. Both knights urged their mounts on, straight ahead, glancing at each other as the troll came crashing out of the forest after them. Edward did not look over his shoulder, but counted its mighty footsteps as it began to close the distance. _One. Two. One. Two. One-two-one-two—_

_Now._

Edward pulled Squall up, at the exact same moment Richard did Tinker, snapping the rope completely taut to catch the troll by the ankles. Down it went, crashing to the ground with a great thud.

After Edward and Richard had ridden far enough away, they both slid out of their saddles and collapsed weakly onto their backs in the grass. Tinker ambled over to Edward and began chewing on his hair, and he made no move to push her off him. The sky above was so blue that Edward felt dizzy with it, and as he stared up into the cloudless expanse, remembering what it had felt like to soar through the trees with the wind lashing at him, it was as though the ground underneath him now was falling away. The thrill of their narrow escape was still surging through him, terror and excitement and pure relief at being alive tearing joyously through his bones—and then Edward started to laugh.

Richard turned his head and blinked dazedly as Edward rolled over onto his side, still laughing. Now that he had started, he found he could not stop, and he watched the laughter catch in Richard’s eyes and spread across his lips, until they were both clutching their sides and gasping for breath.

“Gods and goddesses, I thought we were done for,” Edward said at last, wiping his tears away. He got to his feet, brushing the prickly grass from his breeches, then held a hand out to Richard. “Well? Are you finally sorry you left the comforts of home for this? Sweat and grime and troll-stink?”

“Sorry that I am completely drenched in troll-stink with you? Never.” Richard clasped Edward’s hand and let himself be hauled up. “In fact, to tell you the truth,” he added, squinting up at the sky, “I do believe I was starting to chafe at the bit, back home. I’d started to wonder if I was, oh...meant to be doing something different.”

Edward gaped at him. “You—you did?” This, somehow, seemed even more unbelievable than the adventure they’d just had. Richard had always seemed so— _contented_ back in the castle, assisting with affairs of state and socializing with visiting nobles, and generally wandering around spreading cheer. He never would have guessed that Richard had been harboring similar feelings of restlessness. Unsure of what to say, and feeling a strange twinge of guilt, Edward turned his attention to Squall, running his hands carefully over his legs and his sweat-soaked withers.

“Oh, yes.” Richard whistled Tinker over too. “It was high time for a change. I just couldn’t see it until you showed me. So really, I must thank you.”

“Well...” Edward swallowed. “Well. If we were both meant to wander, then...we are fortunate that we can wander together.”

There was that broad smile again. “That we are, Edward dear. That we are.” Tinker nudged Richard’s hand impatiently, and he grinned and petted her nose and began to exclaim over what a fast, clever girl she was.

And looking at his friend then, Edward caught a fleeting glimpse of—something, the way one might catch a glimpse through a window when a breeze blew a curtain aside. He couldn’t name it, but it had to do with the way Richard was chattering enthusiastically to his horse as she whickered and shook her mane; and the way his damp, unkempt curls fell over one side of his forehead, but stuck up behind. The broad line of his shoulders, and the bits of dandelion that clung to the back of his tunic, and the dewy, breathless light of the meadow all around them.

“—something?”

Edward shook himself. “What?”

“Did you say something?” Richard turned to face him. His eyes were a lighter blue than the sky, clear like blown glass.

“We should,” Edward said, and had to start over, averting his eyes so as not to let on that he had been staring. “We should start moving if we are to make camp before dark.”

They pressed on, walking alongside the horses to give them a rest, Richard composing on his lute the whole while. _“I sing you a tale of Sir Edward the Brave,”_ Richard intoned theatrically, _“so noble was he, and fair._ _He was handsome in face, with such power and grace, though he’d little to boast of downstai—“_ at which point Edward reached over and pulled the lute out of Richard’s hands, leading to a squabble that lasted them several miles.

By now, making camp had become a soothing routine for Edward. Putting up the tents, which he was much improved at now; seeing to the horses, and collecting water and firewood and preparing supper. Edward was in the middle of rubbing down Squall’s legs and turned to ask Richard for another wet cloth—and then stopped, alarm snapping at his wrists and the base of his spine, his mouth going dry.

Richard had been undoing his belt and slipping out of his tunic, and as his undershirt rucked up, Edward saw what it exposed—a stripe of bruised skin on his side. “You’re hurt,” Edward blurted out.

Richard glanced up, then waved his hand. “Ah! Pay it no mind, my marigold. You know I’ve endured far worse than this little scrape,” he said with cheer in his voice—but Edward could see that he winced as he settled cross-legged on the ground.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Throwing down the cloth, both in annoyance and in shame at not having noticed before, Edward began rummaging in his packs.

“How harshly your tongue cuts, my dear! Don’t you know the old story about the cabbage farmer, who persisted in calling his brother a cabbage-head?” Richard remarked, wagging his finger. “Day in and day out, he called the poor young man a cabbage-head. Little did the farmer know that he was invoking a deep naming magic, that was taking hold unseen—and so one day, the farmer awoke to find his brother’s head had indeed become a full head of cabbage, green leaves and all.”

Edward paused. “And then what happened?”

“What do you suppose?” Richard shook his head sadly. “They ate him.”

Edward rolled his eyes. “That’s not even a bit true.” He finally successfully unearthed the jar of the more potent salve which he kept for injuries, and held it out. “Put this on,” he began, but instantly he saw it would hurt if Richard reached back to apply it himself. “Never mind. Let me,” Edward bit out, kneeling next to him. Ignoring his friend’s noises of protest, Edward lifted the edge of Richard’s undershirt.

The bruise was red and angry, the burst blood vessels spread across his skin like a continent on a map. Edward gestured for Richard to slip his arm out of his sleeve so he could get the shirt out of the way, then hesitated, his hand hovering over Richard’s side. “There’s nothing on your chest, and no excessive swelling, just the bruise,” he said. “I just want to be sure you haven’t broken a rib. Does it hurt to breathe?” Richard shook his head. “Can you turn at the waist for me? Slowly.” Richard did, blinking slowly at Edward, his expression unreadable.

Satisfied, but only just, Edward dipped his hand into the jar and carefully began to massage the salve into Richard’s side. The sharp, clean scent of herbs filled the air, along with the familiar tingling rush of one of Kay’s spells. “What happened?” Edward asked. “You didn’t fall—”

“No, it was a tree. We were running from that thing, and a branch whipped back and smacked me soundly.” Richard seemed to shiver lightly at the touch of the cool salve, but he kept his gaze fixed on the smoldering fire.

“I knew we should have brought the padded vests,” Edward muttered.

Richard chuckled. “Ah, but then you would have complained about the heat.” Edward moved his hand lower, to the bruised area just above Richard’s hip, and Richard sucked his breath in.

Edward froze. “Did that hurt?”

“No. ‘S just cold.” Richard blinked again and swallowed, his throat bobbing.

Edward looked down. Touching Richard like this wasn’t unfamiliar to him; he and his friends had seen each other through countless injuries in battle, and had tended to one another’s wounds many a time. Gently kneading the salve in, Edward focused on the scent of the herbs, and decidedly did not think about the soft, tender skin underneath his hand, or the way Richard’s breathing had gone slightly uneven. “You’re as reckless as ever you were, you know,” Edward said. His voice sounded low and scratched.

The beginning of a smile touched the corner of Richard’s mouth. “Much less reckless now than I was in my youth. Do you remember when we were squires—that first day we rode out with Second Company, and we stumbled right into a raid?”

“Of course I remember.” Edward withdrew his hand and rolled the panel of Richard’s shirt back down, stopping himself from smoothing the linen down with his hand. “You saw that bandit who’d trapped people in the mill-house, and you completely forgot your sword and went charging in with a sack of—what was it, flour?”

“Barley. Threw it right at his head. It exploded everywhere, too, I was shaking barley out of my underthings all evening.” Richard grinned more broadly. “And then you kicked the door down screaming my name.”

“I wh—I did not _scream!”_

“Oh, but you did. Shriller than a shrike in the summer, and then you called the bandit, I distinctly recall, a ‘dung-filled, ogre-faced bastard.’ It was rather sweet of you.”

Edward grumbled as Richard swiveled at the waist again experimentally. “Trickster Goddess, I’ve never had one heal this fast!” Richard exclaimed. “Are you sure you aren’t a witch yourself, Edward my dove?”

“The pain relief is only temporary, so we’ll likely need to reapply it in the morning.” Edward sat back on his heels. “And no, it’s only a new salve I made by combining two different recipes. Peppermint, parsley, and cloves, and Kay did the preservation spell.” He recapped the jar. “If I were keeping any large secrets from you, I think you would have learned of them by now.”

“Ha. That I would,” Richard chuckled. But there was something small and closed about it now, as if Edward had said or done something to push a door shut between them—though Edward had no time to puzzle it over before the bread in the pan over the fire began to burn.

After supper, Edward’s private ritual each night was the same. First he set up his bedroll, tucking his small linen sachet of dried lavender underneath the head of it for a good night’s sleep. Then he lined up both his packs along one side of his bedroll to create a little wall at his back, and so that his knife and sword were within reach in case of ambush in the night. After that, he folded his outer clothes and laid them neatly at the foot of the bedroll, resting his boots next to them, standing up and ready to be pulled on at a moment’s notice.

Richard lay on his side in his own tent, head poking out of the flap and chin propped on one hand. He was watching him, Edward realized. “What,” Edward said irritably, a prickling sensation beginning between his shoulder blades.

Richard shook his head. “You fascinate me, that’s all,” he said with a sleepy-eyed grin.

Making a face, Edward ordered, “Don’t lie on that side when you sleep tonight,” then unrolled their map and spread it out on top of his bedroll. With a quill, he began marking the map with notes from the day’s journey—inserting his own lines between Stanley’s and Michael’s writing, scribbling _TROLL_ over the forest they had passed through. “In the morning, we’ll make for Windham,” Edward said decisively, “and then on through to Glenburn—“

“No, that’s a trade horse road,” Richard interrupted. “This time of year, it’ll be busy, and teeming with all manner of riders and carts and caravans on their way to Glenburn market. We should take the side road through Owlshead Wood.”

Edward frowned. “By my estimate, that would take us another three days. The trade road is the better way.”

Richard gave a shrug. “Have it your way, but it’ll be trampled into a muddy mess by now, and full of more holes than a wheel of cheese. You’ll hate it.”

Edward frowned more. “We’ll manage. And you don’t know what I hate.”

“Of course I do,” Richard returned, ticking them off on his fingers. “Holey roads. Hot clothing. Scratchy clothing. Ink smudges. Wasps. The sound of the blacksmith’s hammer, unless he beats in perfect four-four time—“

“Be quiet, you.” Edward looked back down at the map. They were covering ground at a good rate; they would be able to visit both the major towns and all the smaller villages on this side of the mountains before autumn. Even a slow crossing of the mountains themselves would take perhaps ten days at most; and then it would not be much farther to the sea.

 _The sea._ Edward paused, his fingertips skimming the waves drawn in ink at the edge of the parchment. He had only ever heard about it, and seen pictures of it in books or woven on tapestries. Though he had always known it existed, his mind somehow could not comprehend the existence of such a vast expanse of water. “It, it goes on forever,” William had told him as a boy, eyes shining. “Y-You can’t see the next country at all. It just feels like...y-you’re on the edge of the world.”

Edward glanced out of the corner of his eye at Richard, who was beginning to settle down for the evening. “You’ve been to the sea, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Once or twice,” Richard yawned. “When I was very young.”

Edward tamped down his tiny flare of jealousy. “What was it like?”

“Imagine a lake.” Richard thought. “And then imagine more lake.”

Edward scowled.

Grinning, Richard lay down—on his good side, at least—and gazed sleepily back at him. “People always tell you the sea is blue, but if it is, it’s no blue you’ve ever seen before,” he continued. “Blue and green and stormy gray and silver, sometimes at turns, or all at once—and when the waves rush in they have white crests like unicorns’ manes. On days when the sun is high you can scarcely look at it for its brightness.”

Richard’s eyelids wavered. “I remember the sound of the tide. Like the wind rushing through a thousand trees. And the smell, but I couldn’t describe it to you, it’s...salt and rock, and the deepness of things. One morning just before the sun rose, I sat on the sand and watched the fisher folk go out in their boats, and everything was so still. I remember thinking I was in the most peaceful place in the world.”

The whole time Richard had been speaking, Edward had been sitting spellbound by his words. Coming back to himself, he lowered his gaze to the ink drawings on the map, which seemed now to convey only a pale shadow of the magic he’d heard described. “It sounds beautiful,” Edward murmured.

Richard hummed a noise of assent, his eyes all the way closed now. “You’ll see it soon enough,” he said muzzily, and then he was asleep.

Edward stood and put out the fire, and in the process nearly tripped over Richard’s packs, which he had left strewn on the ground. With a sigh, Edward bent down to rearrange them, stopping when his hand brushed against the little pouch covered in stars that normally hung off Tinker’s saddle. Curious, Edward picked it up, but he couldn’t tell whether there was something inside it, or if what he felt was simply the thick folds of the velvet itself. Shaking the pouch also produced no sound.

Feeling embarrassed that he’d intruded on Richard’s privacy, Edward stowed the packs between their tents, then walked a little ways from their camp to lie back on a broad, flat rock, gazing up into the starry endlessness of the sky. He gave his eyes time to adjust, and then began to pick out all of the stars he knew, tracing lines between them to find them. _Cup-bearer,_ he thought, naming them in his mind. _Hunting-dog, Herdsman, Ships-keel, Crow._

What would it finally be like, Edward wondered; to reach the limit of his own understanding? To see the boundary of it laid out before him, there, where the shore met the sea—and then to push past it completely, and break through to something entirely new?

 _Move on,_ the night wind in the rushes seemed to whisper— _move on, move on._

Whatever Edward was seeking to quiet his sleepless heart—he would find it there, he thought. At the water’s edge; the edge of the world. He was sure of it.

\---

The Princess Beverly was not anything like the knights had expected. Everywhere they accompanied her—through the castle’s gloomy corridors to the dining-hall, out for a walk on the grounds, then back up the guarded staircase to her high tower—she seemed to be watching them as much as they watched her, with one corner of her mouth tilted up and that keen gaze; her eyes the bright green of emeralds and spring grass. And then she began to ask them questions.

“Is it true you fought a stone giant when you were out patrolling the border with Third Company?” the princess had asked with breathless excitement when they were out riding one morning. She wore her hood and sat sidesaddle, her filly walking along sedately, and the six knights rode three on either side of her. “Forgive me—I only overheard you talking the other day, and I have been curious to know the story.”

“I-It was only a small one, Your Highness,” William said first.

 _“Small?”_ Edward choked out before he could stop himself.

The princess had turned to him then, her eyes gleaming. “How tall was it, Sir Edward?” she asked eagerly; for of course she had made it a point to learn all of their names. “Were you very frightened?”

Her directness had flustered Edward, but thankfully Stanley had stepped in and said politely, “Stone giants can grow to be over a hundred feet tall, Your Highness. The one we encountered was relatively young, so it was perhaps fifty feet at most.”

“Gods and goddesses.” Princess Beverly looked impressed. “However did you manage it?”

“We didn’t fight it so much as escape it, Your Highness,” Benjamin chimed in. “Fortunately, our company had a catapult mounted on wheels, so we were able to hold the giant off for a time.”

“Lucky as well as brave.” Princess Beverly smiled. “I am in good company, then. Tell me, which of you is the fastest rider?”

“That would be our Sir William, Your Highness,” Richard had replied, inclining his head in the other knight’s direction. “All of us have always said he and Silver there could outrun the Black God’s chariot itself.”

“Oh, I d-don’t know about that,” William had said modestly—and then he looked at Edward, who had been mortified in an instant. “I-In his knighthood, Sir Edward has become famed for his swift riding.”

The princess’ smile had turned mischievous then. “Well then, Sir Edward, Sir William—why don’t we have a race to see who is fastest of all?” she replied. And with that, she had swung one leg over her horse and nudged her smoothly from trot to canter to gallop, tearing away across the grounds so that the six of them had no choice but to race after her.

It wasn’t long after that before the princess and her knights, so close in age and so rarely separated, became friends. True friends, who away from the jealous eyes of the king could speak freely to one another, confide in one another and laugh together. In the afternoons the six knights took Beverly on secret excursions into the forest, to eat fruit off the trees and swim in the river—and in the evenings they sneaked out to sit on the ramparts outside the princess’ tower, looking out at the castle torches that winked like stars, and beyond, the faint lights of the royal city in the distance.

It was on one such evening that they first began to realize just how deep their bond truly went. After tiptoeing out onto the ramparts in the chilly air, avoiding the night watch, the seven friends slid down to sit with the cold stone of the castle wall at their backs. Beverly had dragged the thick silk coverlet from her bed out here with them, so they could all huddle under it for warmth. Edward was squashed up next to Richard and stealing his warmth as well, not that Richard seemed to notice. Tipping his head back so that it hit the wall, Edward gazed up into the infinite depths of the night sky, mapping with his eyes the stars and constellations he had taught himself to navigate by.

Earlier that day, Beverly had had to entertain three potential suitors, and she had turned them all away. One of them, however, had brought her a lacquered box of marzipan flowers, and it was these that the seven of them shared now, the sweet paste crumbling between their fingers. “I know they mean well,” Beverly said, as she sat pulling the ribbons out of her hair and undoing her braids. “And I try to be polite, but it’s just—I cannot _abide_ the way they look at me. They all see me as their princess and not as a person.” Her mouth was a rigid, disapproving line.

“Not everyone is as fortunate as we have been, to know you this way,” Benjamin said as he tucked the corner of the coverlet around Beverly’s knees. “As your suitors and subjects both, they hesitate to try.”

“To say nothing of what His Majesty would do to them if they offended you,” Stanley added, brushing marzipan crumbs off the silk.

Beverly sighed. “I know. I suppose it’s just...don’t you ever dream of a different life?” She gazed out at the city, the breeze tangling in her hair, and a small, bitter smile touched her mouth. “Growing up, you know, I secretly longed to be one of you. A knight of the realm, doing heroic deeds and ridding the land of evil.”

“Well, that’s a splendid coincidence, because growing up I always wanted to be a princess,” Richard said jovially, nudging her with his elbow. “Shall we trade places, then?”

And Beverly had laughed, and plucked the golden circlet off her head, resting it neatly on top of Richard’s—and in exchange Richard had unsheathed his sword and tapped both her shoulders lightly. “I dub thee Sir Beverly of Derry,” he said in a sonorous voice. “Rise a knight!”

“No, you have to do it properly,” Beverly said. She sat up on her heels, back straight and hands on her knees as she looked at all of them intently. “Have me swear the oath of fealty. Will, you are the highest-ranked, aren’t you? You start.”

“Very well.” William smiled, clearing his throat. “As a knight of the realm, you are h-hereby sworn to a virtuous life, and to defend this kingdom and its ruler w-with bravery and honor.”

“You may not turn your face from wrongdoing, and you may never turn down a cry for aid,” Michael continued.

“When your people are in danger, it is you who will stand between them and the enemy,” said Richard.

“May you seek the counsel of wisdom and mete out justice,” said Benjamin. “Let your sword arm be swift, and let your arrows fly true.”

“Be brave when you face your foes on the battlefield,” said Stanley, “and be loyal to your allies, however many of them should fall.”

“Now that you have learned the laws of chivalry, and the laws of this land,” Edward finished, an unexpected lump in his throat. They were ancient words, as familiar to him as anything he’d ever known, the same words his master had spoken to him before his knight’s vigil—and in this, all of them passing them on to Beverly, he felt the weight of the centuries they carried, the stone in every house and the stroke of every sword. “Keep them in your heart wherever you may ride, until your dying breath.”

William fixed his gaze on Beverly. He was not smiling now. “Do you so swear?” he asked, his voice low.

The night wind blew across the ramparts, sending shivers racing down Edward’s spine. Without realizing it, he had sat up straighter, his eyes wide, the hairs on his arms standing on end. He was wide awake all of a sudden, feeling the cold like a blade in his chest—and there was something more. The feeling of a final thread being looped through a needle; the feeling of a key turning and a door being unlatched. _It has begun,_ a tiny voice whispered. _Remember well this night._

Under starlight and the light of the low-burning torches, Beverly had lifted her head—and in that moment, in her night-dress with her hair undone, the princess was more regal than they had ever seen her before. “I swear,” she said.

Seasons later, the friends would swear a new oath to one another, one of unending friendship and trust—and in time, people would come to know them as the Seven. And on the day Beverly first rode out with them in her bronzed armor, Edward had looked at her astride her horse, at the grim, clear-eyed resolve on her face—and thought _, this is who I was meant to serve. Here is one who knows her true place, and what wrongs she must right._

The seventh knight lowered her visor. “For Derry,” she said.

“For Derry,” replied Sir Edward the Brave, and turned his eyes to the road ahead.

\---

The rest of their questing summer passed this way. Edward and Richard rode through every town and village they could, listening for stories on the roads and following them to where the wild creatures were, to slay them or drive them out. Wherever they went, the people said, _there ride Sir Richard the Brash and Sir Edward the Brave; they are on a quest for the queen._

They fought a flock of cockatrices that had been killing crops and livestock, and made a narrow escape from the claws of a grizzly bear. One particularly treacherous forest was home to giant spiders the size of ponies, and Edward made the mistake of starting an argument with Richard as they rode through the dense thicket, not looking where he was going and not realizing that Squall was walking straight into a cobweb of alarming size.

Not all of their adventures involved such creatures, however. Once they helped to lead the search for a missing child, whom Edward finally found sleeping soundly underneath a berry bush, and whom Richard scooped up gently and carried back to her worried fathers without so much as waking her. A sudden summer storm flooded another village, and Edward and Richard helped get everyone to safety atop the tallest hill, sloshing through mud up to their knees and shouting through the driving rain.

It was almost like being on campaign again; feeling drunk on daylight and the rhythm of the road beneath his horse’s hooves, fighting back to back with someone whose every thought and movement in battle was interwoven with his own, an understanding born of all their shared years. Richard complained of aching muscles and sore feet constantly, but underneath it, Edward could tell that he felt it, too.

As they traveled, Edward continued to mark the map, charting their course and noting which roads needed to be paved and which dams needed to be rebuilt, and which lords needed closer inspection. He was learning the kingdom little by little, embroidering every inch of it onto the fabric of his heart. In all of this, Edward took a fierce pleasure—though some nights he still woke, gasping for air, from dreams he could not remember.

In truth, there were places where the townspeople had no need of rescue at all, as many of the rumors of monsters turned out to be nothing more than rumors. People telling stories and jumping at shades, unused to living out of the dragon’s terrible shadow. It was to these people that Edward knew least what to say, and secretly he was thankful that Richard was there to reassure them better than he ever could.

And so it was that the two knights had their fair share of days to themselves. Market days, when they strolled between the rows of stalls and Richard had Edward taste things he never had before—leek pottage and marrow pasties, and small stone fruits called dates that came in from countries across the sea, and that were like sweet sunshine on Edward’s tongue. Festival days, with music and dancing in the village squares and by the rivers, that stirred something in Edward so that he always asked Richard to stop for a moment, that they might watch from a distance. On warm nights, they put out their fire early and waited for the fireflies to come winking in and out of view.

Their suppers were never quiet, as the garrulous Richard disliked silence, and he could ramble on for hours and provoke Edward into countless harmless arguments. To pass some of the time, Edward taught Richard how to make rudimentary poultices, and Richard taught Edward some of the hand signals he used on Tinker, which he attempted on Squall with little success. Most nights Richard also played on his lute, and Edward sat and watched his nimble hands coax familiar melodies from the strings, the music pulling strangely at him and making him think of impossible things.

Once, Richard was playing an old ballad, and then opened his mouth and sang the words, his voice low and sweet like dark honey. When he was finished, Edward stared at him in disbelief and asked, “You can _sing?”_

“Oh, I can carry a tune,” Richard said airily, with a strum for emphasis.

It beggared Edward’s belief, that he had known Richard for _years_ and never heard him sing this way. The thought infuriated him. “Then—then why are you so out of tune all the time?” he spluttered.

Richard shrugged. “It got a rise out of you. I thought it amusing.”

“You are fortunate that this dinner knife is so blunt,” Edward retorted, waving it in the air.

Richard just laughed and fiddled with his strings. “Pray do not gut me before I finish writing our song, my turtledove. At present I cannot think of a good enough rhyme for your name, but you will know when I do.” Edward grumbled at him and returned to his stew, ignoring the growing warmth in his ears.

One windy morning, they were doing their washing in a stream when Merideth came hurtling down from the sky to ungracefully drop two rolls of parchment onto Edward’s head. They were from Benjamin and Stanley, and Richard read them aloud while Edward beat their soapy shirts with the frying pan.

In Benjamin’s letter, he wrote of how he and builders from all over the kingdom, along with the Council, had been designing new town halls and storehouses; ones with stronger foundations that would not fall so easily to earth tremors, and roofed with thatching they had made fireproof. They had worked to pave smoother roads and widen narrow doorways, and were now in the process of installing ramps, such as the ones used during sieges—but these instead would be for the use of elderly and disabled citizens, so they would not have to bother with steps and staircases.

 _The queen and Horsemistress Audra have also been plotting together for quite some time, and finally they have set their plan in motion—they are forming a new group called the Queen’s Riders,_ Benjamin continued. _It will be open to any young woman who wishes to sign up, whether she is a commoner or the daughter of a noble house. Mistress Audra will instruct them in horsemanship and archery, and our Beverly wants to teach them the quarterstaff and hand-to-hand combat herself. I remember a time when we hesitated to engage the princess in any sort of proper sparring match—at least until the day she knocked me flat on my back, do you remember? Today, I look at her and am endlessly proud of her, as I am of all of you._

_It’s difficult work that we do, and some days it seems to go painfully slowly. But in spite of this, I am happy. It is a stronger Derry that we build together, my dear friends—and I feel fortunate that I am still here to witness it, and do what I can. Wherever this finds you, I know for certain you are doing the same._

Stanley, on the other hand, wrote little of his work, for he knew how Richard complained of boredom whenever he tried. Instead, he wrote of how the sparrows were building their nests on the parapets, in a way they had not done for many years. He wrote of the foals that had been born that summer, and of the ducks and swans that had come to live in the moat, which Benjamin and the queen delighted in spoiling with corn and oats. On days when there were no lectures, Stanley said, the pages and the young cooks sought out Kay for stories—and in the evenings, William and Michael kept all the candles in the library lit, talking and laughing as they went over their lessons; while Beverly and Kay donned their cloaks and crossed the drawbridge arm in arm, walking out into a city now filled with music and light.

 _“In other news, Lady Patricia, whom we met last winter if you will recall, has kindly written to say she wishes to help sponsor the new Riders group—so the queen and I will be receiving her at court tomorrow,”_ Richard read aloud. He lowered the parchment, an incredulous expression on his face. “’If you will recall’? How could we forget? They talked to no one else but each other half the evening, and the other half when she was socializing with the ladies, he kept staring across the hall at her with those pitiful doe eyes. And then for _days_ afterward it was nothing but _Lady Patricia says this, Lady Patricia says that.”_

Richard raised his eyebrows at Merideth, who was balanced on one foot on Tinker’s saddlehorn and grooming herself fastidiously. “Stanley is the wisest of all of us, but in this, he has root vegetables where his brains should be. What say you, Merideth?” The falcon let out a shrill chuckle.

Edward laughed too as he wrung out the last of the shirts, flapping it out onto a rock to dry. “You are much too cruel to Stanley.”

“Well, he is much too cruel to me, so he deserves it.” Sniffing, Richard returned to the letter. _“I am especially grateful for the Lady’s support, for as I am sure you know, other nobles are not so generous. Next season we pass the law to increase taxation for the aristocracy, and there are those who do not hesitate to make their displeasure known—Lord Uris, his grace, amongst them. Once I might have bitten my tongue before him, even with Her Majesty standing behind me in support, but no longer. As painful as it is to find my father and myself on opposing sides, and as disquieting as it is to think of the upheaval this law could set in motion down the road, I wish to hold myself to my duty for the greater good.”_

Richard’s brow furrowed as he read on, _“As a boy, I could never have even dreamed of such change in the kingdom as we have seen in this past year alone. I continue to learn a great deal, and one thing I believe I have learned is this: Our courage is not measured by how much we destroy, or how much we have conquered. It is in the places where we stand, and the power that we relinquish, and all that we trust in ourselves to do with no certainty of the outcome. I know not that I possess this sort of courage yet, but with each day that passes, I can only hope that I draw a little closer to doing so. Indeed, perhaps that is the best that any of us can hope for.”_ He sighed as he rolled the letter up again. “He always was the most dramatic of us too, wasn’t he?”

Edward did not answer. It was as though he had seen in his mind the pictures of the castle Stanley painted for them with his words; as though he had heard his calm, steady voice like a gentle river running, speaking to them across hills and valleys. As Richard smoothed a scrap of parchment over his knees and set to writing a reply, Edward busied himself with shaking the water out of the frying pan so that he could turn his face away, not wanting Richard to see that his eyes were wet.

The summer was drawing to a close; already the leaves were changing color, and the wind had gained a new bite. In the in-between moments, Edward began to feel that same sleeplessness again, driving him towards the edge of the land as the seasons turned. His dreams at night turned to dreams of miles of blue water, rolling out before him like silk. In some of those dreams, there was a figure on the shore with him, just at the edge of his vision; someone who would turn and walk away—but Edward always woke before he could call out to them, or see their face.

\---

As the two knights rode into the shadows of the mountains, the land grew steadily more rocky and unforgiving. It was nearing nightfall on the day they approached the forest at the base of the lowest mountain, and to pass the time as they crossed the plain, they had started a game of fox and hen on horseback. At present Edward was the fox, and he was urging Squall after Richard and Tinker, laughing, when Richard suddenly pulled up and stood looking wordlessly ahead.

“Tired already?” Edward grinned as he cantered up next to Richard, tapping him on the shoulder. Then he saw the expression on the other knight’s face, and followed his gaze to something in the distance. The glint of a fire, and a half-moon of wagons and caravans.

“Players,” Edward murmured. Every so often they had passed a player wagon on the roads, and Richard had always greeted them warmly as they went by—but this was the first time they had encountered such a large troupe. He looked back at his friend. “Would you like to...”

Richard shifted in the saddle. “Don’t you want to make the forest before dark?” he mumbled after a long pause. “To give us a head start up the mountain tomorrow, and all that.”

He was nervous, Edward realized, watching him. It had been many years since Richard had been among his people—nearly half his life, and Edward could guess that the prospect of walking among them once more was a daunting thing. But Edward also knew desire when he saw it.

 _Move on,_ the wind whispered as it rolled over the plain.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Edward said. “We’ll make it up the mountain tomorrow either way. Besides, far out as we are, I’d much rather have company tonight than not.” He paused. “The choice is yours, Richard,” he added.

Richard sucked in a deep breath, then patted Tinker’s neck. “Well, my girl?” he whispered. “Shall we go over and say hello to the Family?” The mare flicked her tail and stamped, as if to say, _Stop dawdling and get on with it, then._

“Riders ho,” a voice called out as the two knights drew near. There were perhaps fifteen or twenty players, young and old, sitting on the steps of their caravans or on woven blankets around the fire. One broad-shouldered man with streaks of gray beginning in his beard got to his feet. He did not look unfriendly, but there was a flicker of wariness in his eyes when he saw their armor and the horses’ barding. “How can we help you, good sirs?” the man asked politely.

Dismounting, Richard hesitated, then asked, speaking the words clearly, “Is there room by the fire for a wandering soul and his companion?”

The words seemed to unlock something between them. The man laughed heartily, regarding Richard with a new light in his eyes, and held out his hands. “For a fellow wanderer, there is always room by the fire, and hot food and a bed besides,” he said as he clasped Richard’s hands warmly.

“Hell’s bloody bells, you’re him, aren’t you,” an older woman smoking a pipe muttered. “That duke’s ward what became a knight.”

“It’s Sir Richard of the Seven!” a small girl cried excitedly, and was immediately shushed by an older boy.

Richard took a shaky breath, nodding and looking around at all of them. He was smiling, and his eyes shone. “Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight, I am back among the Family, and in the Family my name is Rihhi. And this is my good friend Edward,” he added, beckoning Edward over.

“Welcome, Rihhi, Edward,” the man said, shaking Edward’s hand as enthusiastically as he had Richard’s. “I am Bearn, and there is my wife Nelda.” A woman with a single braid that hung over her shoulder and sharp eyes waved to them. “Come sup with us,” she said, drying her hands on her apron. “There’s plenty.”

Everything happened very quickly after that—Edward was given a rug to sit on, and introduced to so many people at once that he was left struggling to remember all their names. There was homemade mead and jugged hare, and roast vegetables sweeter than any Edward had tasted in the city, and cool pats of butter on rough country bread that rasped pleasantly in his throat. One of the elderly women also insisted he take a steaming tin mug of stewed cinnamon apples, and Edward let it warm his palms as he breathed in the comforting scent.

Richard, meanwhile, sat in the midst of the players and began swapping stories with them eagerly, all of them talking so fast Edward could barely make any of it out. Out of his armor, Richard looked as though he had been one of their troupe all along. Feeling keenly aware of how out of place he was in contrast, Edward stared down at the mug in his hands.

“Is it true you shot the dragon right in his eye, Sir Edward?” a little voice piped up.

Edward turned to see that the young girl from earlier had crawled over to sit next to him. Her name was Aisley, if he remembered correctly, and she watched him now with round eyes. “Er. Yes,” Edward said, uncertain what to say next. “I didn’t kill him, though,” he added finally.

Aisley made a scoffing noise. “I know _that._ The queen did that.”

A smile crept up on Edward unexpectedly. “That she did. The queen is very brave.”

Aisley nodded. “You serve her because you love her, don’t you?” she asked matter-of-factly. “The knights in the stories all do.”

The older boy, who Edward had learned was her brother, groaned. “Aish, stop pestering him.”

“Hush, Almund,” Aisley said, with a haughtiness beyond her years. “I’m not pestering, I’m _asking.”_

“I’m just saying! Sir Edward’s got better to do than answer your featherheaded questions.”

“No, it’s all right,” Edward said, then looked back at Aisley. “I love the queen dearly. She is as a sister to me,” he explained. “We grew up together—but I would serve her even if it had not been so, for she is a brave and righteous queen.”

Aisley seemed satisfied with that, and was bold enough to scoot closer and sit on the corner of Edward’s rug. “They call you the Brave too, don’t they, Sir Edward?” she asked. “How did you get your name?”

Edward hesitated. “Well, it was on campaign, my first after being knighted,” he said finally, and proceeded to tell the story of how their company had been sent to defend the border against the western raiders. Edward had been the only one on watch the morning their camp was attacked, and he’d sounded the alarm and led the charge.

“What happened next? How many raiders were there?” asked Almund, who at some point had leaned closer to listen too, eyes wide. “Did you kill very many of them?”

Edward faltered suddenly. It was as though he had been telling a story that had happened to someone else; and now he was staring through a door into the true memory of it. The blinding clouds of dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves; the blood on the grass, on his sword, in his mouth. The screams of agony as men died.

Edward had seen, firsthand, what bloodlust did to people—to the likes of Sir Henry and Sir Patrick, who had been killed in a needless battle they had provoked, their faces still twisted in rage even as the light leached out of their eyes. From the beginning, Edward had sworn to himself to only take a life when necessary; had told himself he was doing only what he had to, to protect the kingdom.

Edward opened his mouth to form some response, but was interrupted by a loud coughing fit from inside one of the open caravans.

“Almund!” a hoarse voice called. Immediately, the boy sprang to his feet and went rushing into the caravan.

Edward looked at Aisley in alarm. “That’s Grandda,” she said solemnly, turning Edward’s shield over in her lap, where she had laid it to examine the heraldry. “He’s very ill.”

Edward frowned. “Is he?” He looked towards the caravan again, from the inside of which the faint sounds of coughing could still be heard. “Might I see him?”

The caravan creaked and rocked slightly as Edward stepped in, carrying the saddlebag where he kept his emergency supplies. There was a small bed built into an alcove in the wall, and an old man was sitting up in it, Almund holding a cup of water to his lips so he could drink. “Who’s that?” the man rasped, squinting in the candlelight.

“That’s Sir Edward, Grandda,” Almund said, with an apologetic wince in Edward’s direction. “He’s a knight from the castle.”

The old man harrumphed. “Allus thought knights’d be taller. What’s he doing here?”

“I heard you from outside.” Edward glanced around the inside of the caravan; clean and tidy, and free of dust and cobwebs. A little window opposite the bed was pushed outward to let the air in. “How long have you had the cough, grandfather?”

The old man eyed Edward with clear suspicion. “Since the start of the season.”

Edward gestured to his chest. “May I?”

“I won’t be prodded and poked at like an infertile sow,” the old man snapped.

“Oh, I dislike such treatment as much as you,” Edward said, and meant it. “No unnecessary poking and prodding. If I overstep, you have full permission to take a switch to me and box my ears all you want. I swear it on my honor.”

The old man harrumphed again and undid the top button of his shirt, then turned his head to stare at the wall, which Edward supposed was the most agreement he was going to get.

Listening to the old man’s lungs told Edward it was a dry cough rather than a wet one, so there was no danger of it being a chest infection. After some more examination and a series of questions, Edward sat back and said, “I believe you have hayfever. There’s no cure, exactly, but it should subside when the pollen in the wind does.”

“Black God’s bollocks!” the old man argued, even with his labored breathing. “That’s dragon’s dung! I can’t have hayfever. I’ve been traveling these roads since the day I was—“ He stopped as he was wracked by another spasm of coughing—“born.”

“Be that as it may, at your age you’re more susceptible to what’s called an allergic reaction.” Edward reached into the pouch at his waist for his tiny bottles of lungwort and elderflower cordial. “Now, hayfever isn’t fatal, but you don’t want to risk weakening any further, so I can advise that you take—“

“Oh, what does it matter.” The old man slumped back into his bunk, a sullen scowl on his face. “M’ not long for this world anyway. Doesn’t matter much how I go.”

“Of course it _matters,”_ Edward snapped before he could think. “If our days are so numbered, do you not think it worthwhile to live each one as best you can?”

The old man directed an even mightier scowl at the ceiling and did not reply.

There was a soft rustling by the open door of the caravan, and Edward turned to see Aisley peering in with large, fearful eyes. Edward pinched the bridge of his nose, let his breath out slowly, and counted to ten the way Stanley had taught him before speaking again.

“What do you like to do most?” Edward asked. The old man was still sulking. “Oh, come now, surely there is something you enjoy.”

There was a long pause before the old man said finally, his voice gruff, “Drinking my morning ale, I suppose.” He sniffed. “Drying fish and beef. Taking walks with the children, if we happen to stop somewhere nice. Got to teach them the important things, like how to find water, and read deer tracks, and tell good mushrooms from bad. Heads’ll be filled with fluff otherwise.”

Edward nodded. “You have a fine pair of grandchildren,” he said sincerely. “You must be proud of them.”

“Right proud,” the old man rumbled. “These ones’ ma and da are long gone, but I know they can see them from where they are, and they’re proud, too.” Out of the corner of his eye, Edward saw Almund’s cheeks turn pink in embarrassment.

“There now. Young as the children are, do you think they enjoy seeing their grandda suffer so?” Edward raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure they want you to be well so they can take those walks with you. Who else will teach them all they need to know?”

“He’s right, Grandda,” Almund urged, eager, and Aisley nodded with equal enthusiasm. The old man grumbled wordlessly at both of them, but did not argue further.

The small store-cupboard above the bed looked promising, and glancing at it, Edward caught sight of several jars of familiar ingredients. “Almund, fetch me some hot water and a spoon, please. And mortar and pestle if you have them.”

Almund did, and with the boy watching closely, Edward brewed a tea made with elderflower, lungwort, ginger, and garlic. The old man spat out the first mouthful, claiming it tasted vile, but Edward pushed the cup back into his hands and insisted he drink all of it. “You’ll need to wet your throat often. Ale in the morning isn’t bad for you, but this tea will help with the cough. You must drink it at least three times a day until your symptoms subside,” Edward said sternly. “Take it with a spoonful of honey on the side, if that’ll help.”

The old man frowned but continued to drink grudgingly; already, Edward noted, his cough was not so severe. He finished the tea, and then let his grandson take the cup. “I won’t take charity, mind,” the old man told Edward. “Almund, my satchel.”

Edward was about to protest, but the old man rummaged inside his satchel and finally produced a thick strip of dried beef. He brushed the lint off it and set it firmly in Edward’s palm. “That’ll keep forever, it will,” the old man said with satisfaction. “I made it two years ago. Or was it three? Still tasty as ever. Makes your teeth good and strong, too.” Edward thanked him as politely as he could muster and stowed the dried beef in his waist pouch, while Almund hid a smile behind his hand.

When Edward emerged, he saw Nelda leaning against the caravan with her arms crossed. She nodded at him. “That was very well done,” she murmured, tilting her head. “We haven’t been able to get him to see healer nor hedgewitch, stubborn as he is. Was that magic that you did?”

“Not at all. It _was_ a combination of hedge remedies,” Edward admitted, his eyes flicking back to the crowd around the fire. “My friend who is a witch taught it to me, but any other healer worth their salt would have done exactly the same. I think he needed the talking-to more than anything else, to be honest.”

“You’re probably right.” Nelda smiled. “You’ve got a healer’s heart, Sir Edward. Oh, don’t deny it—I can see it on you, plain as day.”

It was the first time anyone had told Edward that. At times when he’d had to assist a physician on the field, he’d been told he had a good memory, or steady hands—and more than once, he’d been complimented on the fact that he could stomach the sight of so much blood (“not like some of these other highborn boys, you’d be surprised”). But a healer’s heart? That was another thing entirely.

“If you’re looking for Richard, he’s over there,” Nelda said, tilting her chin toward the log where several men were sitting. “Don’t look so surprised, lad. I can see that on you, too.”

Thoroughly embarrassed now, Edward mumbled something and excused himself to return to the fire, close to the log where Richard was sitting and talking to Bearn. “...Ida and Asta,” Richard was saying. “And our ma was Magda, and everyone just called our da Towse.”

“I’m sorry, lad.” Bearn shook his head. “Not that I recall. But our kingdom’s small enough. If we cross paths at Samhain, I’ll be sure to let them know you were with us.”

The disappointment only lasted for a flicker of a moment on his friend’s face, but Edward saw it, just before Richard tucked it away underneath a smile and a word of thanks. It was then that Edward realized he probably shouldn’t have been listening in on this conversation, and was about to back away and find something else to do—but then one of the younger men who was refilling the tankards called, “Give us a song, Bearn,” and the others clamored in agreement as they passed a fiddle down.

“Oh, all right, you rascals.” Bearn tuned the fiddle and stood, setting the bow to its strings. “What shall we have first?”

Someone yelled, “Mairi’s Reel,” and Bearn chuckled and began to play a fast tune as Nelda beat time on an oak barrel. By the fire, the players began to dance—first in pairs, and then all with joined hands. Richard had caught sight of Edward and grinned, moving to sit next to him, and the two of them drank their mead and watched the merry celebration.

Edward was always careful of how much he drank, but his head was mildly, pleasantly blurry by the time a girl came up to him and asked if he would like to dance with her. “Oh, I don’t dance,” Edward demurred, then pointed at Richard. “But my friend might like to join you.”

Richard sighed gustily and said to the girl, “Such a fool my companion is, no? To not even consider a dance with such a handsome partner.”

The girl looked from Richard to Edward, grinned as if with some slow understanding, and said, “A fool indeed,” before offering her hand to Richard and whirling him into the center of the dance.

Chuckling, Edward clapped along to the rhythm as Richard valiantly tried to keep up with the steps, then evidently gave up and allowed himself to be led and twirled underneath his partner’s arm. The girl danced well, and though she barely came up to Richard’s shoulder, she guided him with a firm sureness. At the end, she bowed, and Richard laughed and sank into a pretty curtsy in response.

Richard was handsome when he laughed, Edward thought unexpectedly; and even with his head swimming, some part of him recognized that this was not a new thought at all. That knowledge along with the sight of Richard there made Edward’s heart twist in his chest against his will. If I wanted, he thought. If I wanted to, I could—

Then someone next to him cleared her throat, and Edward looked down. “I so wish someone would ask _me_ to dance,” Aisley sighed wistfully.

And perhaps it was the mead, or the music, because what Edward said in response was, “Would the lady Aisley honor me with a dance?” as he offered his hand.

The child’s face lit up. “Why, I’d be delighted, Sir Edward,” she said graciously. The two of them stood and took their place by the bonfire for the next song, as Nelda began drumming the beat.

Richard’s face lit up, too, when he saw Edward—and though Edward was not much better at dancing than Richard was, he held both Aisley’s hands carefully and followed her stern instructions as best he could. In the middle of the song, they were instructed to change partners, Edward dancing with the grinning girl who introduced herself as Cassandra, and Richard whirling a giggling Aisley into the air.

It was a flurry of merriment, and Edward felt so overwhelmed by it that he bowed out at the end of the song with apologies to the girls. Richard gladly took one of them on each arm for the next, while Edward returned to his seat. Bearn winked at him as he passed, and Edward felt his cheeks go hot and hid his face in his tankard of mead.

When Richard finally ducked out of the fray, he was short of breath and shaking the sweat from his forehead. “You may spend more time with your pretty companion there,” Edward observed. “Don’t feel you must attend to me; I’m perfectly happy to have this tankard keep me company.”

“Ah, no. There are scores of men and women here lining up to dance with Cassandra,” Richard laughed, collapsing back onto the ground beside Edward and kicking his legs out in front of him. “Besides, she is perfectly lovely, but not the girl for me.”

Edward shook his head. “Choosy as you are, you will never take to wife,” he said bluntly. “I would have thought you’d at least want to find some rich noblewoman to marry by now.”

“Oh, I will never marry, as Her Highness shall never marry,” Richard said in a pleasant tone, and returned his gaze to the dancers around the fire.

Edward blinked. The mead was catching up with him, filling his head with cotton—and for a brief moment, he thought he grasped what Richard said, the barest edge of its meaning. But then Bearn shouted, “What’ll it be next?” and everyone shouted back the name of a different favorite song.

Richard whipped his head up. “Wait, wait,” he called, and scrambled to retrieve his own lute. “Do you know ‘The Rover and the Wren’?” he asked Bearn as he perched on the barrel next to him, a light flush on his cheeks and a grin on his face.

Bearn scoffed. “Do I know ‘The Rover and the Wren,’” he said, and drew a bright note out of the fiddle, that sounded like lemon peel and sunlight. Richard matched it, and the two of them began to play a lively, sweet melody; the plucking of the lute sounding like a horse ambling across open field, the soaring of the violin sounding like the bird arcing high above. Closing his eyes, Edward let the music carry him far away—and when the song faded and the cool silence of the night remained, it took him a long moment to return to his body.

Everyone cheered then, and toasted to the musicians, and then to the queen’s health and one another’s for good measure. Then the young man named Don, who was now refilling tankards so enthusiastically they slopped over, called, “Play us another, brother Rihhi.”

“At the very least, you seem to play better than you dance,” Cassandra agreed, her tone teasing. “Go on, then.”

“Oh, I shall, cheeky one.” Richard adjusted one of his strings, and then cleared his throat and began, _“I sing you a tale of Sir Edward the Brave—“_ Edward plugged his ears, and everyone roared with laughter.

“All right, all right,” Richard said, waving his hand and laughing too. “Let me see now.” He thought, and then bent his head over the lute and began a low, soft song—one that sounded like the wind stirring in the branches, or like a gently smoldering ember being stoked to flame. The simple purity of it caught Edward off-guard, and he sat there frozen, listening—and then Richard opened his mouth and began to sing.

_When the sunrise comes dancing down over the hill_

_And the hearth has ceased blazing to keep out the chill_

_There’s work to be done, and the good earth to till—_

_So I shall bid you good day, my love,_

_That’s when I’ll bid you good day._

_When I’ve dresses to mend, and surcoats to make new,_

_And the wheat hangs so heavy there under the dew,_

_You must bring in the harvest before the day’s through,_

_So I shall not think of you, my love,_

_That’s when I’ll not think of you._

_When the rain comes a-rushing down gray from above_

_And the sparrow takes flight, and the lark, and the dove_

_There’s a house waiting for you you’ve been dreaming of_

_I’m here and I’ll say come inside, my love,_

_That’s when I’ll say come inside._

_When your voice comes so soft and your eyes shine so bright_

_And the curtains are drawn to hide our candlelight_

_Stay the world till the morning, for ours is tonight_

_So I can hold you in my arms, my love,_

_Just so I can hold you tonight._

It was an old love song, the kind everyone knew without remembering where they had first heard it before. But Edward was certain he had never heard it sung like this. As though the song was alive and Richard’s voice was carrying it to a safe resting-place; as though the song had its own quiet, steadily beating heart.

As he looked at Richard sitting there, bathed in the golden glow of the fire, Edward felt abruptly robbed of the breath in his lungs. And then Richard lifted his head and caught his gaze, and held it. Richard was breathing through parted lips, and he had a dark, shivery look in his eyes that almost—made it seem as though he was in pain. As though the singing had torn open an old wound, or stripped something in him raw, and the sight of it awakened in Edward an impulse to go to Richard and—touch him, to comfort him somehow, though he didn’t even know why. The more Edward thought about it, the more absurd it felt; and yet he couldn’t take his eyes from Richard’s.

The song had ended. All this time, no one else had spoken, until the little girl Aisley piped up, “I suppose that was all right.” Everyone laughed, including Richard, who ruffled Aisley’s hair affectionately. Edward tore his gaze away.

“Well!” Nelda sighed, smiling and dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her wrists. “I can think of no better way to end a night.” She clapped her hands. “The hour is late. To bed with you now, children.” 

_“Must_ I go to bed?” Richard asked in a sorrowful tone, and Nelda laughed and swatted him with the hem of her apron.

With the gathering winding down, the small children helped to clean up around the fire before being shooed off to bed, while some of the adults chose to continue their conversations and linger out in the cool night air. Edward and Richard would have set up their tents, but Bearn and Nelda said they wanted to sit outside too, to keep watch and look at the stars—so the two knights were welcome to take their caravan instead. Richard whispered to Edward that it was their way of offering them a bed for the night, and that when a player did so it was impolite to refuse. So they stepped into the couple’s caravan, Richard having to duck to make it through the door.

Inside, it was as snug and cozy as Almund and Aisley’s grandfather’s caravan had been. There was the same alcove with a patchwork quilt-covered bed, a worktable strewn with brushes and paint jars, and a little potbellied stove with a stovepipe that poked out through the roof. It reminded Edward, with an unexpected pang, of Michael’s chambers back in the castle, and how they had often gathered there in the evenings. Not wanting to disturb anything, Edward perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap.

Though he tried not to, he couldn’t help but watch Richard. The other knight was looking fondly around the caravan, as though he saw things he recognized; the chair by the stove, the kettle on the stovetop, the woven charm hanging by the window. Then Richard knelt and lay down the bedroll Edward had carried in, spreading it out on the floor. Edward could see the curve of his spine through the back of his tunic.

Edward blurted out suddenly, “I didn’t know...you had another name.”

“Hmm?” Richard looked up. “Oh, well, it has the same meaning. Rihhi is the name I was born with, and Richard is its equivalent in the common tongue.” He paused, sitting back on his haunches. “The duke thought it would be best for me to go by Richard, when I became a page. Fit in more...make people talk a little less.”

Edward frowned, and then thought for a moment. “Do you prefer it?” he asked finally. “Rihhi?”

A look of surprise crossed Richard’s face. “Do you know, I’m not sure,” he replied. “It’s been so long that I don’t suppose I’ve ever asked myself that.”

Edward knew the question he wanted to ask next. _Is that something you want me to call you?_ The words burned in his mouth like salt. He thought of Richard sitting by the fire again—the gold shining in his hair and reflected in his eyes; how he had bent over the lute and cradled it as surely as if he was holding a lover. A shiver ran long, light fingers down Edward’s spine.

“What are you thinking?” Richard asked. He tilted his head slowly, and the small motion seemed to fill the tiny space around them with lightning.

Recovering, Edward shook his head and managed a smile, and to say another thing that had been on his mind all evening. “It’s just, I know players consider themselves all one Family,” he began. “But seeing you with them tonight, I suppose I thought...it’s as though they’re truly your blood.”

“Blood nothing,” Richard scoffed. He got to his feet, crossed the floor in a single stride, then spread his hand against the ceiling of the alcove and ducked his head again. “Family is family, player folk or no. Did we not prove that enough, as children?” He lowered himself to sit beside Edward, which sank the bed slightly so that Edward tipped towards him. He steadied himself against Richard’s shoulder at the same time Richard caught him by resting his hand against the base of his spine.

Edward looked up.

Richard was blinking back, as if dazed. His lips were faintly parted, and the apple of his throat dipped as he swallowed. “Edward,” he said. His warm, broad hand was like an anchor holding Edward there, the heat of it bleeding through his shirt and into his skin, and Edward felt a flare of yearning; deep, almost animal. He wanted to lean into the touch, he realized all at once, his pulse quickening to a rush of gold. This was what he _wanted,_ and the enormity of his want was terrifying.

Edward drew back.

As if nothing had happened, Richard took his hand away, and at once Edward felt the small, sharp loss of it curling in the pit of his stomach. “Pardon my reach,” Richard said cheerfully, and stretched out behind Edward’s back to retrieve something—a blanket—from a compartment in the wall. The blanket hit the back of Edward’s head as Richard pulled it out.

“I was talking to Bearn and the others earlier,” Richard continued, unfolding the blanket in his lap. “They go to the great Samhain celebration the players hold each year by the Great Lake, at autumn’s end. Many of the player folk went into hiding—before,” he added, somewhat unnecessarily, for Edward knew when he meant. “What I meant to say was, I am glad they gather for Samhain once more.”

Edward thought he heard a shade of longing in Richard’s voice. “Could you...not follow them?” he asked. “On our way back?”

“You have forgotten your geography,” Richard chided, clucking his tongue. “The Lake is farther north. It’s terribly out of the way...I could not go and keep my promise to you and to the queen.” He smiled. “But no matter—it is enough to know they are well.” Then, abruptly, Richard slid onto the floor and arranged himself on the bedroll.

Edward sat there dumbly for a moment. He was about to protest and ask if Richard wouldn’t rather take the bed; but it seemed a little late for that, which made him feel useless. “Are you sure you’re all right down there,” he tried.

“Perfectly.” Richard threw the blanket over himself, folded his hands underneath his head, and closed his eyes, his voice light and cheery and betraying nothing at all. “Best get some rest now, if we’re to leave at first light,” he added, and then, “Good night.”

“Good night,” Edward said softly. He put the candle out, then lay flat on his back on top of the quilt and stared at the ceiling of the caravan—trying and failing to ignore the sound of Richard’s breathing, or the beating of his own heart.

He thought of how Richard had danced earlier; how he had thrown his head back and laughed with a bone-deep joy Edward could feel. He thought of what would happen if he told Richard, _you don’t have to keep your promise to me. I never asked you to._ But he could not imagine how he would even begin saying it, and he wondered if that made him a coward after all. Rolling over, Edward faced the wall of the caravan and shut his eyes, and did not fall asleep.

At some hour late in the night, Edward heard Richard get up and move quietly toward the door. The floor creaked softly, as if the room was sighing. Then Edward felt Richard stop by the side of his bed and stay there for a moment, and he tried not to breathe. What would he see, if he turned over and opened his eyes? What would Richard say to him if he looked at him then?

But Edward didn’t open his eyes, and Richard didn’t wait for him to. His footsteps were near-soundless as he continued to the door and stepped out of the caravan, leaving Edward aching alone in the dark. He waited as the hours slipped by, but Richard did not come back in, even after the sky outside the window had grown light.

\---

When it was morning enough that Edward felt he could pretend to have just wakened, he tidied the bed, collected the bedroll, and opened the caravan door. Richard was sitting on the ground with Bearn and Nelda, mugs in their hands and blankets around their shoulders. Clearly they had been talking all through the night, and now they watched the sunrise together in silence.

Unwilling to intrude on their private moment, Edward drew near hesitantly. Richard held his mug out to Edward with only the briefest of glances up at him, and Edward, hoping it was a peace offering of some kind, took a sip. It was tea, made with peppermint and lemon, and it helped to shake the last cobwebs of sleep from around him. He returned the mug, and noticed that Richard was careful not to brush his fingers when he took it back.

“The mountain pass should be fine this time of year, but be wary of the wolves at night,” Bearn said. He inclined his head at Edward. “Just keep your fire lit and you’ll have naught to worry about.”

Edward nodded. “Thank you,” he said. It was time to go.

As they saddled the horses, Nelda gently pushed bread and goat’s cheese and a bottle of mead wrapped in cloth into Edward’s hands. “For your journey. Ride safely, Sir Edward,” she told him with a smile. Then Nelda turned to Richard and folded him into a tight embrace, like a mother embracing her son.

“May our wagons cross paths again one day, Rihhi,” Nelda said. Embracing her back just as tightly, Richard replied, “May our wagons cross paths again,” and then murmured something to her that Edward could not hear.

 _Stay,_ a voice in the back of his mind whispered. Edward’s heart was in his throat. _Tell him to stay._ But then Richard pulled away, and Bearn clapped him on the shoulder, and the moment for it had passed.

The rest of the camp was beginning to wake, and all of them gathered now to bid the knights goodbye. Almund and Aisley’s grandfather had come out of his caravan, aided by one grandchild on either side, and all three of them waved from their front step.

Mounting their horses, Edward and Richard waved back to the players, and then turned and rode toward the forest, through the misty trees, and into the autumn.

\---

When the dragon-king descended upon the royal city, and the banners that crossed the rooftops burned and the people fled screaming in terror, there was a band of Seven who did not.

Long had these courageous knights revolted in secret against King Marsh, riding through the kingdom to rescue their people and douse the dragonfire. Now, Sir Edward the Brave stood out in the open alongside his friends, all of them brandishing their swords and crossbows and poleaxes and glaives—but most importantly, the steeled daring in their eyes, that told the king they would never bow to him again.

The dragon-king was mighty, and his footsteps shook the earth. His wingspan blotted out the sun itself and cast a shadow so dark that Edward could scarcely remember blue skies and daylight. All was on fire, and all of a sudden the terror plunged deep to the heart of him.

“Courage, friends!” shouted the seventh knight who stood in the center of their formation. All raised their weapons and looked up, into the dragon’s burning amber eyes.

 _YOU FOOLS,_ the dragon roared. _YOU THINK YOU CAN SAVE THEM FROM ME? FROM_ ME? _THE LAST THING YOU HEAR WILL BE THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN BONES SHATTERING IN MY JAWS._

It was then that Edward saw Death looming over him, in flame and shadow. And when he saw it for what it was, and knew these moments would be his last—a strange peace overcame him, and his mind became as clear as a still pond on a windless day. It was so simple, Edward realized; and then he threw his head back and laughed, long and loud.

The dragon narrowed his wicked yellow eyes. _WHO LAUGHS?_ he bellowed. _WHO IS SO WITLESS AND INSOLENT AS TO LAUGH AT THEIR KING?_

 _I am not afraid,_ Edward thought. _My knight-commander gave me my name, and I will remain worthy of it. If this is to be the last thing I do—let it be for my friends._

With one hand behind his back, he gave the signal the other knights would recognize in their secret code as a command to run. Then he stepped forward. “I see no king,” Edward shouted at the top of his lungs. “I see a cowardly snake. I see a worm to be crushed. Your people will rise up against you, and they will dance upon your grave, and your name will be mocked and scorned in the history books for generations to come.”

The dragon’s eyes found him, and only him. He opened his great, smoking maw, and Edward felt the heat of it on his face. _YOU DIE TONIGHT,_ he snarled.

“So be it,” Edward laughed, and with steady hands, he raised his crossbow, and fired.

And the bolt struck true, in the dragon’s right eye. The beast screamed with a wounded fury that rent the air, and hurled himself skyward, twisting and coiling in agony. From where he had been thrown to the ground, Edward watched as the dragon flew away to his castle to wind around his tower, where he would nurse his wounds, and wait.

The knights knew the dragon would return, and so they quickly set to putting out what fires they could, lifting broken beams and seeing to the wounded. Edward looked them over, directing the physicians and healers to those who had been burned worst, and tending to some of the others himself with the supplies at hand.

As she worked alongside her fellow knights, the Princess Beverly did not lift her visor, but Edward could feel her gaze on him. It was only when they were alone that the princess said to him, “My dear friend, we owe you our lives this day.” Then she paused. “But hear what I say, for my sake as much as yours—I cannot allow you to do what you have done again. Besides, if anyone is to face him in the end, you know why it must be me.”

Beverly reached for his hand, twining her callused fingers with his. “The kingdom needs you, but not as a sacrifice,” she said, her voice gentle. “Your friends need you.”

There was a fallen banner at his feet. Pulling his hand away gently, Edward picked up the banner and began tearing it in two for makeshift bandages. “The kingdom needs its rightful queen more than it needs one humble knight, Your Highness,” he said briskly.

“Edward,” Beverly said. She shook her head. “I will not command you now as your princess, but I will tell you as your friend. We may well not all survive this, but I will not have it be because one of us was needlessly reckless. Fight bravely, fight true—but also know that your life is worth saving. As much as mine, or as anyone else’s here.” Her tone was firm now. “Do you mark me?”

Edward pressed his lips together hard before looking back at her. “Yes,” he said, and Beverly clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Good.”

But there was something Edward had not said; something he still could not voice to anyone, or explain even to himself. That in the first moment after the dragon had spiraled away into the sky, and Edward breathed in the cooling air and realized he was not to die that night after all—what he had felt was not relief, but a sharp pang of disappointment.

\---

And so the two wandering knights crossed the mountains. They scrambled up steep slopes and traversed perilous ravines, and followed the rising sun eastward over the snow-capped ridges. In the mornings they bathed and shaved their beards in the thin river that wound through the mountains like a skein of silver, and for supper they hunted hares or shot down grouse. Edward also knew which berries were safe to eat, and grew to like the sour taste of the ones they found growing among the thorns.

He drank the land in savagely; the feeling of living off it, up here where all was wilder and the air was colder and they were ever closer to the sky, which seemed like its own country with its billowing white hills and its ever-changing hues. More than ever, being in the mountains reminded Edward of his first days as a squire away from the castle; the first time he truly realized the world outside of the walls was a place to be _lived_ in. A place that could be explored and learned and understood, and that it in itself did not want to kill him, the way he had feared for so long.

There were goats that lived among the rocks here—hardy creatures, with thick scraggly coats and little black eyes. They often stopped and stared at Edward and Richard before springing away, up cliff faces that were so steep they were nearly perpendicular to the ground. Edward had never seen their like before, and he marveled at how nimbly they could climb, even the young.

There were wolves in the mountains too, as Bearn had said; and from time to time they would hear their howling in the distance, piercing the night. Richard despised wolves, which Edward knew—so on nights when they heard the faraway animal cries and Richard could not sleep, Edward sat up with him, and tried to engage him in light conversation. But Richard’s heart was clearly not in their talks, now, and Edward did not know what to make of it. His answers were brief, and when he was first to speak it was only to comment on trivial things, like the flavor of the stew or whether it seemed like it was going to rain.

Instead of his usual chatter, most of the time Richard played wordlessly upon his lute—some songs Edward had not heard since childhood, and many others he did not know. Many of them were long, haunting melodies that seemed to weave pictures of ancient times in faraway lands; of old kings and queens and crumbling palaces on windswept cliffs, and magic older than time. Others seemed to be tunes Richard was inventing as he went along, plucking idly at the strings with no structure or rhythm, while deep in some kind of cloud of thought.

At times this behavior irritated Edward greatly, and scraped at him until his insides felt raw. If Richard was in one of these moods and began to play while it was still light out, Edward would stand and stalk off into the bushes for lack of something to do. If it was in the evenings, Edward lay awake gritting his teeth, wishing he could rip the wretched instrument from Richard’s hands.

Edward’s dreams had shifted, too; to scenes from his memory that he had had no intention of revisiting. He would dream the two of them were back in their seats next to one another at the Council table, Richard tickling Edward’s elbow with his quill during a meeting the way he always did, Edward kicking his ankle underneath the chair. He would dream they were new-made squires, whispering to one another from their bedrolls crammed into a single tent; or sitting in Michael’s chamber in the castle with their feet propped comfortably on each other’s chairs; or budged up side by side underneath a silk coverlet on the ramparts, with the stars spread out above them.

On some nights, Edward’s dreams were less visions than impressions, the ghosts of sensations. His hip pressing into Richard’s thigh as the caravan bed sank beneath them. Richard’s palm like a brand at the base of his spine, his face soft and surprised and so close—and it was these dreams that Edward jolted awake from as though he had fallen, heart pounding and gasping for air.

The dreams confused him; dragged things out into the light that he could not bear to look at. There were times Edward feared Richard would take one glance at him and see them all somehow written on his face. The mountains were so vast, and yet it seemed Edward could not get far enough away from his traveling companion. At turns it made him feel a strange, shapeless ache that went so deep it hurt to breathe—and then a burning anger at Richard, and at himself, and at their entire wretched journey.

And then one windy sunrise, Edward stepped out of the mouth of the cave they had slept in and saw, among the wild peregrine falcons that swept the sky over the canyon, one that flew in a purposeful line towards them. It was Merideth, bearing two letters—one for him, and one for Richard. The names on both were written in Beverly’s hand.

Edward opened his letter and read, _My dear Edward—_

_I do not know if the noble Merideth will find you this time, as you may have crossed the mountains by the time she departs. But if she does, I write hoping these letters find the two of you (and your horses!) safe and well-fed and happy._

_It is growing steadily colder here; nearly too cold for swimming, but I cannot help but take a dip in the mornings while I still can. Dear Kay is most amused and calls me a silly duck, but all the same, she has knitted me a shawl to wear when I come out, that keeps me warm as a brick on the fire. As for the others—poor Benjamin broke his leg climbing down from some scaffolding, and we have told him that is what comes of trying to do everything himself. But of course Benjamin will not hear it, and now he pushes himself about the city in his wheeled chair to resume his work. Meanwhile, the pages have learned that if they ask Michael the right questions, they can get him to go on a storytelling tangent and forget their lectures entirely, and apparently William and Stanley have some sort of competition going to see who can mark essays the fastest. Sometimes I think we have scarcely left childhood._

_But I suppose I send you this letter now not to tell you so much about the place you have left behind; in part because our friends have done that in much lovelier words than I could ever write, and in part because I think I can guess why you left it behind in the first place. You have done so much for me, Edward, and for Derry—and it is my greatest wish for you now that the land beyond the castle walls, the land we fought to win back, is showing you as much kindness as you have given to it. And that if it cannot give you the answers you seek, that at the very least your wild and free ramblings can soothe the sharp edges of the questions in your heart._

_Lately I have been wrestling with questions of my own, and thinking of how much there is to do, still. I had no father or mother to teach me how to sit on the throne and wear the crown. At times I wonder if I am even fit to rule, or if any of the choices I have made are the right ones._

_But perhaps if I cannot ever truly know whether what I do is best, I would like to think that what I can do first is to listen. As queen, I can listen to the voices that call for me, and that is where I shall go. As queen, I must not only trust that my heart is in the right place, but strive in earnest to keep it there and do all I can to strengthen it—for it is this that will guide me as I forge a path of my own, and follow the duty I have to my people, to those I love best, and to myself._

_Once, I might have thought that being in possession of such a heart was a weakness. That love itself was either a weakness, or a cruel weapon. But it was you and the rest of our friends who first helped to show me what it truly is. The way it nurtures those who share it, and builds a sturdy house in which they may grow and flourish. How terrifying, to be sure, it is to see it in the light of day and realize how much we need it; to allow ourselves to give into it, and be led by it—but nothing so precious was ever found without risk or fear. And of course, many times when I am afraid—all I have to do is think of you, and all that you have taught me of courage, and of doing the good thing no matter how difficult it might be._

_Oh, look at me, rambling on and on like this! William will laugh when he sees how much parchment I’ve used. I don’t know what came over me; it’s likely this change in weather. My nose is terribly cold and runny now._

_I forgot to mention that Benjamin and Michael have made window-boxes, and planted in them flowers that will bloom in the winter, so we will have some color around the castle even when the snow falls. There is a box outside your window, too, full of pansies and violas, and we’ll watch over them for you until you return._

_Though there is much else that I would say to you, Edward, I believe that in many ways you and I know one another too well for words. We have seen each other through countless battles, and I know that in the years to come we will see each other through them still, no matter how many mountains lie between us._

_Be well, my friend, and above all, listen to your heart. May it guide you to where you are meant to be. All my love, Beverly._

Edward reread the letter twice, and then rolled it up tightly and tucked it into the pocket in the lining of his vest, close to his breast. Oh, Beverly, he thought, blinking hard. _I have done so little to deserve you._

He had no parchment left, so Edward unrolled their map on the ground, carefully tore the edge off one side, and turned it over. _My dear friend,_ he wrote on it in his smallest script. _I think you are right in saying we know one another too well for words. It is perhaps why I unfortunately find myself unable to write you a very good response, other than to say that we are well and glad to hear you are the same. We cross the mountains now, and will reach the sea in perhaps a fortnight._

 _I am,_ Edward continued, and then paused and crossed it out and wrote, _Richard is,_ and then his hand hovered over the strip of parchment for so long that the ink dripped onto it. “I can’t concentrate, stop looking at me like that,” Edward said crossly to Merideth. “Both of you,” he added, this last to Squall, who snorted loudly.

A tuneless whistling snapped the silence in half, and Edward exhaled through his nose. Richard was wandering back out of the cave, his own letter from Beverly unrolled and half-crumpled carelessly in his hand.

It was the littlest thing, but the sight of it started a small fire in Edward’s head. Forcing civility into his voice, Edward asked, “Would you like to write anything back to Beverly?”

Richard shrugged and held his hand out for parchment and quill, then folded his legs underneath him and hunched over to write on the ground. He scribbled for a moment, before pausing and looking up. “How do you spell ‘ridiculous’?”

The flame of Edward’s temper leaped higher. “How did you spell it?” he asked through his teeth.

Richard held the parchment closer to his face and squinted. “R-E-D-I-C-O-U—”

“Give me that,” Edward demanded, holding his hand out, but Richard twisted away. “Who are you calling ridiculous in your letter, anyway?”

“No one,” Richard said, looking cagey.

Edward’s eyes widened. “Wh—is it _me?”_

“Did I say it was you?” Richard asked mildly, folding the parchment over into a tiny square and tying it to Merideth’s leg.

“You aren’t denying it’s me, either!”

“Ooh, how self-important we are this morning! If you must know, I wasn’t calling _you_ ridiculous.”

“Well, then—then who _were_ you calling ridiculous?”

“Beverly!”

“Richard, _why are you calling the queen ridiculous?”_

“Why not, she’s called me worse things! Also, why in all the gods’ names are you _shouting?”_

“Because you’re being an idiot!” Edward shouted, leaping to his feet. Squall snorted, and Merideth flapped her wings in alarm. “A sarding, dung-headed, arse-faced idiot!”

 _“I’m_ being an idiot?” Richard shouted back as he got to his feet as well, and Edward was outraged thinking that Richard had probably done it just so he could _tower over Edward._ “You’ve been impossible these past few days, fractious and sulky for no reason that I can see, and _I’m_ the idiot?”

The wind had picked up again, thrashing the thorn bushes and wailing hollowly through the mountain canyon. It raked Edward’s hair into his face, and—properly furious at absolutely everything now—he swatted his hair out of his eyes and scowled through it at Richard. “Do you know something?” Edward demanded, spitting hair out of his mouth, even though the small truth of what Richard had said was plucking at the back of his mind. “I’ve had enough of you and your slouching about and your useless twanging. And I’ve had more than enough of your nonsense, how—how you can talk about how one would hypothetically breed blue goats to make blue wool coats for twenty miles one day, and then speak barely five words to me the next!”

Edward stepped closer and deliberately looked up into Richard’s face, at the stubborn set of his jaw and his lowered brow and his blazing clear eyes. And even then, even _then,_ Edward felt a strange, hot shudder at the center of his rage. Wanting the intensity of that gaze to stay on him and never fade, wanting to just grab Richard by the shoulders and— “You are the most—“

And it was at that moment that a gust of wind tore through the canyon, and the map, which Edward had let go of when he stood, was whipped high into the air and over the edge of the cliff.

Edward whirled. “Curse it,“ he gasped, reaching out, as Richard made a lunge for it as well. But it was too late. The map was the wind’s plaything now, being batted farther and farther away from them until it was a tiny fluttering scrap in their sight, lost to the rocks far below.

Edward and Richard stared down at it, and then stared at each other.

And Edward _was_ about to really let him have it then; he was the slightest hair away from knocking Richard down and strangling him on the spot. But even though his blood was still thundering in his ears, and a thousand angry words were burning on the tip of his tongue, something stopped him. 

Because, Edward realized, he was _tired._ Of being angry, and acting cold, of fighting and shouting, and Richard—

Was there, with him. After all they had been through, after all the chances Richard could have taken to turn back or go his own way—he was still there, with Edward. And that meant something. 

_He deserves better from you, too._

“I’m sorry,” Edward said; the apology falling clumsily from his lips, surprising even himself. He forced the flame of his temper down, down, until it was nothing more than a smoldering ember kicked into the back of his mind. Swallowing, Edward continued, “I—that was badly done of me. I shouldn’t have said what I...I’m sorry.”

Richard blinked, then began to nod. “I accept your apology,” he said stiffly.

“Well,” Edward said. “Good.”

“Good,” Richard replied.

And then, by some miracle, they both began to laugh—silently at first, and then with weary relief, and then so hard they were clasping each other’s shoulders to stay upright.

“Gods and goddesses, what have we _done,”_ Richard said, wiping his eyes.

Edward shook his head. “I think we can agree we’ve both been colossally stupid.” 

“As long as we’re agreeing.” Richard chuckled again, his odd, high laugh that was so familiar. His voice was husky and warm with fondness, the first shade of it Edward had heard in a long time—and he felt his heart reaching out for it, like a child grasping at a dandelion seed. 

“I have to apologize for one more thing,” Edward blurted out, and Richard’s eyes widened in puzzlement. “I should have told you to stay. When we were with the players. You clearly belong with them, and I knew I should have told you to stay on with them, but I—”

Gods and goddesses, it hurt to swallow. “I was selfish,” Edward whispered. “I was selfish because I wanted you to keep traveling with me.”

“Edward,” Richard said softly. The emotion on his face was not one Edward could read, exactly; something sad, something tender. Then Richard’s usual mischievous grin appeared, and he said, “Even with my slouching about and my useless twanging?”

“Stop that.” Edward felt the heat creep into his face. “How can you—I’m trying to tell you what I—”

“Oh, you goose. I was only teasing.” Richard laughed and nudged Edward in the shoulder. “Thank you,” he said, ducking his head a little. “For saying that. But _I_ have the right to choose where I belong, and I meant what I said—we wander together, you and I.”

The lump in his throat grew. Edward nodded, and nodded, then took a deep breath and held out his hand. “Truce?”

In response, Richard slipped his hand into Edward’s and squeezed, and somehow the warmth of his palm seemed to flood Edward’s whole body. “Truce,” he answered.

Edward’s face was burning, and he dropped Richard’s hand. Behind him, he heard Tinker whinny as though she was laughing at him.

Richard, if he noticed, was kind enough not to tease him further. “I really _wasn’t_ calling you ridiculous in my letter, you know,” he added generously.

“You don’t have to explain,” Edward mumbled.

Crossing to the remains of their campfire, Richard began to sweep up the cold ashes with his hands, to be scattered near the river. “No, it’s all right. It wasn’t anything dire, only that...well, Beverly was asking me something impossible, that’s all.”

Edward joined him, bending to collect the rocks they had used and returning them to the undergrowth. “What did she ask you?” he asked.

Richard did not answer for a long time, and then he gave a faint smile and absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, smudging it gray. “She reminded me of a story,” he said. “One I began telling her before we left, that she never got to hear the ending of. She wanted to know if I’d found the ending.”

“Oh.” Edward paused and stared down at the rock in his hands. “Did...you write it down for her? In your letter?”

“Oh, no. It has no ending yet,” Richard replied. “It is a long and complicated tale, with many threads—time-honored oaths and daring deeds and earth-shattering secrets—and dear Beverly knows it. All she said was that however long it took, I owed it to myself as a storyteller to finish it somehow.” He shrugged. “So I simply told her I had had no time for it...that there were more important things to think of on our journey.”

“Your stories _are_ important,” Edward said. He lobbed the rock into the bushes. “People take comfort in them. They’re...I missed them.”

“Oh!” Richard flung his arm up dramatically over his forehead. “So much earnestness over the course of a single day! Gods and goddesses, I beg of you, tell me what have I done to deserve this torment, so that I may cease to offend you in this manner!” Edward pelted Richard with a pebble, and Richard laughed out loud, and things were. _All right,_ Edward thought. They were all right.

When they had finished tidying their camp, Richard sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Well, my friend, I believe we find ourselves in a steaming jar of pickled herring,” he said. “How will we make it through the mountains with no map to guide us?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Edward said. He looked to the sky. _Let your heart guide you._ “I’ve studied the route long enough, and I know how to navigate eastward. I can find our way.” Then he hesitated. “If you trust me, that is.”

“Edward.” Richard rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Of course I do. Even when you’re being completely bullheaded, I do.”

Merideth the falcon had been watching their interactions with a mightily judgmental expression. Edward offered his fist to her, and it seemed to him she dug her talons in harder than usual when she alighted. “I suppose I deserved that,” he told her, tickling her chest feathers. Merideth pecked his fingers in reply, and chuckled when he yelped.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, Edward lifted his arm and cast Merideth off—feeling her weight depart from him in the flurry of her wings, watching her shape resolve itself into a single fluid line. Together, he and Richard watched as the falcon soared out, out, over the canyon and above the treetops, riding the westward wind home.

For a sennight they rode with Edward leading them, following the rising sun by day and orienting themselves with the stars at night. Edward pointed the constellations out to Richard, showing him how at this time of year, they could align their path with the Swan’s wings as she flew south. In turn, Richard told him each constellation’s story, spinning it out long after moonrise, always until one of them fell asleep. 

On the last day, they crested the ridge and stood there for a moment, looking out into the sunrise. They had made it to the other side of the mountain, and the morning mist was rolling back. And there it was, finally, that Edward looked into the distance and saw his first glimpse of the sea.

\---

The leaves in the trees around them were shining red and gold when they descended the mountainside. Everything smelled of the earth, brimming with the rich ripeness of the harvest. Beetles rooted around in the soil, their carapaces gleaming black and green and gold; while honeybees darted among the late-blooming flowers, gathering nectar before the cold set in.

As they went, passing through villages whose names were new to them, Edward was struck by how well life had gone on here; in the farther places the dragon had scarcely touched. Not only that, but the townspeople did not recognize the knights by face or even by name, and merely cast reverent, slightly puzzled glances at them and their shields as they rode by. Edward and Richard passed through thick groves of olive trees, and through vineyards that produced wine so rich and sweet it was like drinking liquid gemstones. And all the while, the wind grew colder, with a strange tang Edward had never tasted in the air before.

The restless feeling that stirred in him was different now. It took Edward a while to realize it—but where once he had been so eager to reach the sea, now he found himself dallying, finding the tiniest of reasons to slow their pace. He knew Richard had noticed it, too; it was in the way he looked sidelong at Edward whenever he suggested they spend the night at an inn for a change, or dismount and allow the horses to browse in the meadow off to the side of the lane.

But to his credit, Richard said nothing, until the afternoon they spent in an olive grove, lying side by side on the earth between the trees with their thick, knotted trunks. From the locals, they had purchased a bottle of oil pressed from the harvested olives, and the two of them sprawled out in the grass and had a merry picnic with a bunch of grapes and the mead Nelda had given them, passing hunks of soft bread to one another to dip into the oil. Richard had begun recounting a lengthy epic that he had picked up from a traveling bard when he was younger, but it was so long that Richard lost interest in telling it eventually and simply lay back with his head pillowed on his hands.

Edward had been observing the sun shining through the leaves overhead, tilting his head back and so thoroughly engrossed in the colors that he didn’t notice his neck had begun to ache. “Do you have a favorite season?” he asked, for lack of something to say, and then wondered if it had been an odd thing to ask.

But Richard merely hummed and replied, “Perhaps I like summer best, if only because it brings back such fond memories of our childhood. The Beltane fires and the jousting tournaments, and how the midsummer feast was the one day of the year that we got as much strawberry pie and cold lemon drink as we wanted. Making kites and trying to fly them behind the stables when Sir Sourpuss wasn’t around. How we always all turned brown as berries from swimming so much.” Richard had a long blade of grass between his teeth, which waved to and fro when he spoke. It fell out completely when he smiled. “What about you?” He rolled over onto his side to look at Edward, slow-blinking in the sunlight.

Edward frowned. “I don’t know. I remember I used to feel anxious in the fall, as a child. It felt as if…the world was dying, I suppose.” He tucked his knees close to his chest, locking his hands around his shins. “But my father used to remind me that it is the way of things. That this is the time for old things to die, so that new things may grow.”

“The player folk have an old rhyme.” Richard lifted one long finger and twirled it in a circle in the air. _“The year is like a caravan wheel; always turning, round and round. Keeps the dust from where you’ve been, carries you forth onto newer ground._ Your father was right, but at the same time, you can’t leave behind _all_ the old things, if you know what I mean. Some of it sticks to you whether you like it or not, like pollen to bees. The seasons change and the seasons remain the same. The world grows and dies and grows again.”

Edward rested his chin on his knees and was silent for a while. “I wish he could have seen all of this,” he said then. “My father. It was he who first gave me the dream of traveling far from home, of one day seeing the kingdom flourish. Of perhaps one day even having a hand in it. And my mother—“ He pressed his lips together. “Perhaps if she had lived to see this, too, she would not have been so afraid of it.”

Edward waited for Richard to make some crude joke about his mother, as he so often had done when they were growing up—but Richard did not. “What was she afraid of?” he asked finally.

“Everything.” Edward closed his eyes. _Spoiled meat. Wild dogs. Bandits. Plague._ “When I was a boy, one year, I asked her if she wanted to visit the seaside. We had never been before, but I thought the fresh air would do her good.”

He heard the faint rustling sounds of Richard sitting up in the grass. “And she refused,” Edward said. “She said there were pirates, and sea serpents, and all manner of creatures that sank ships and devoured sailors. To say nothing of the undertow, which dragged people under the water and swept them so far from shore that they drowned.” _Don’t talk of such frightening things, Edward. You know you would not be not strong enough to survive it—and you know I could not bear to lose you._ “After that, I knew never to ask her to travel to the seaside again.” Edward opened his eyes again, but the light seemed murky now. “I didn’t even learn to swim.”

He didn’t know if Richard had signaled Tinker over or if she had wandered closer of her own volition, but suddenly the mare was nosing at Edward’s collar and nibbling on his hair. Edward offered Tinker several grapes which she was only too happy to lip from his palm, and then rubbed behind her ears with a tight, grateful smile.

“Did you never write to her?” Richard asked. “When we were made squires, and again when we were knighted…she never came to the celebration feasts.”

The laugh escaped Edward, even more bitter-sounding than he’d intended. “Of course not,” he said. He remembered whose families _had_ come, unfailingly; Benjamin’s mother and Michael’s grandparents. Lord Uris, in spite of everything. William’s parents and his younger brother, George, who had bounced around the hall in excitement, chirping about how he was going to become a royal ambassador one day and sail to foreign lands on the biggest ship in the world. The Duke of Wentworth, for Richard; but no family for Edward. “The thing is, I did write to her,” he continued. “At the beginning. I felt terrible about having left home without so much as a by-your-leave. I told her how sorry I was, and why I’d done it, and that I hoped she would forgive me.”

Edward’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “For several seasons, I fully expected her to arrive at the castle door and drag me into the carriage and take me home with her. And when that didn’t happen, I wondered for a long time if I’d _wished_ it had.” Tinker nudged his shoulder again, but he turned his head away from her, blinking hard. “And then finally, she did write back. Just the one letter—to say I was stubborn, and foolhardy, and that I was no son of hers. That I had built too many castles in the air, just like my father. That I had overestimated myself, and that if I did not die in battle, my lungs would give out before too long.”

 _Count to ten, Edward. You can do it. Count for me._ Edward sucked in a shaky breath.

The next thing he heard was Richard swearing quietly. “Normally I don’t speak ill of the dead, but in this case I think the Black God will forgive me. Edward—she was the fool, not you,” Richard said. “You do know it was cruel, what she did to you.”

Edward shook his head. “I know. But I also know she loved me,” he said. “For almost half my life, she was the only person who loved me, Richard, and she did her best in the only way she knew how, and still I resented her for it. My mother raised me on her own, and this was how I repaid her.”

There was a fistful of dry grass in his hand before he knew it, and he began to throw it down, blade by blade. “Sometimes I envy Beverly,” Edward said, biting the inside of his cheek. “Her father was a monster, so he had to die at her hand. She had to slay him. It was only right.”

“But your mother wasn’t a monster,” Richard guessed.

Edward nodded. “She wasn’t a troll, or a witch, or a dragon, she was just—human. She was human, and she made mistakes and loved too fearfully, and she died alone one summer while I was far away.” His jaw ached with tension.

“Edward,” Richard said gently—and Edward nearly screamed at him, because in that moment the tenderness was more than he could stand. “What do you even wish you’d done differently? What _could_ you have done?”

Edward forced himself to take a deeper breath. “I wish I had been _there_ for her,” he murmured. “My mother was…she was deeply unhappy after my father died. She never moped about the house or wept or spoke of him, even, but as a child I sensed how unhappy she was.” His eyes were hot. “So I always thought that when I was older, I could win my shield and save the kingdom and come home, and when she saw me she would cease to be so afraid for me, and I’d finally be able to make her happy again. I’d…fill the house with colorful tapestries and flowers made of glass, and she’d make cakes and sing her favorite songs all day, and in the winter we’d travel somewhere warm and beautiful where she didn’t have to worry about hail and snow.” _Breathe._ “And even if we could never have had that, I wish I could have seen her at least once, before she died. To care for her, and to have her see I was well. To have her be at peace.”

After his mother had passed, Edward had only returned to his family’s estate once; to visit her grave, and to walk through his childhood home and the forest behind it one last time. As he lived at the castle year-round, he had no more use for that big, lonely house—so he gave it to the tenant-farmers, trusting they would continue to care for it and the land surrounding it. Should he have kept it instead, for her sake? He didn’t know now. Edward rubbed his eyes hard. “Perhaps that is why I always feel as though I’m looking for something.”

The grove was quiet but for the occasional chirp of the warblers overhead. A breeze came, shook the branches half-heartedly, and went, and still Richard did not speak. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” he remarked finally. “When you realize that no one can give you permission to find your own happiness and live your own life but yourself.” He sighed and rolled his shoulders back. “You’d think it would be something we’d tell our children as soon as they’re born, but it’s one of the ones most of us are destined to discover the hard way, and continue discovering, right up until the end. Most inconvenient, but there it is.”

Edward stared at him. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying, your mother had a choice. And so do you, now.” Richard fixed his gaze on him then, clear-eyed and intent. “And I’m sure you brought her as much happiness as you possibly could, so if she cannot forgive you…perhaps you can find it in you to forgive yourself.”

 _But that’s not enough,_ Edward wanted to say, frustrated. _And that permission isn’t what I’m looking for. I’m already_ living _my life; I know what my duty is._ But he could not say it, because Richard would not understand.

Around him, the air shivered, and Edward felt the keen height of autumn like a sword’s edge against his heart. Slowly but surely, the season was turning—humming in the arc of the scythe in the field, in the moment just before the spinning windvane came to a halt. Everything in motion; things ending, things beginning.

Edward turned his head sideways and watched Richard. His friend had closed his eyes and tipped his face up to the sun, and a bee was hovering lazily above his nose. There were dried leaves in Richard’s hair, and a smear of oil from the bread they had eaten at the corner of his mouth, that Edward itched to wipe away.

Instead, he yanked up another handful of grass and hurled it at Richard. “Water,” Edward commanded, as Richard spat the grass out. “You’ve been blathering for hours, you’ll dry out if you don’t have a drink. And _don’t_ say ‘but I never dry out,’ or something equally horrendous.”

“You _are_ a witch! Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s very rude to listen to other people’s thoughts, even the thoughts of one your oldest friends?” But Richard obediently took the waterskin and drank, dabbing his mouth on the back of his wrist. He reached over to hand it back, as at the exact same moment, Edward, before he could stop himself, reached out to brush the leaves from Richard’s curls. Their elbows bumped clumsily, and it startled Edward enough for him to turn his gesture into a series of impatient swats.

“You look a mess, too,” Edward said shortly. Pulling his arm back, he bit his tongue and resisted the urge to sit on his own hand.

Richard’s expression changed, but only for a flicker of a moment. He was his usual self again, but at times it still seemed as though he was going out of his way to be kind; as though there were things he was holding out of Edward’s reach. It felt like—caution, Edward realized. And Richard had never been cautious around Edward before.

I will talk about myself no longer, Edward thought, but did not say. I won’t utter one more word about myself ever again, if only you will sing to me like you used to. Laugh at me; tease me, call me all your ridiculous names. Let that be enough, because it is more than enough.

And still that other voice asked, deep in the back of his mind— _What if you want more than for him to laugh at you? What if you want even more than for him to touch you? Is it still enough, if you never tell him—_

 _“Tinker!”_ Richard bellowed suddenly, cupping his hands around his mouth, and Edward jumped. “You thieving old nag! Don’t eat those olives, they don’t belong to you!” Springing to his feet, Richard began chasing after his horse, who was now skittering innocently away from him sideways through the olive trees.

Edward watched Richard run across the grove, and was reminded suddenly of what he had been like at thirteen, taunting the other pages who bullied them and climbing trees to get away. Richard at sixteen, laughing as the two of them raced their horses across the castle grounds; Richard at twenty, newly knighted, beaming and breathless and haloed in golden light as he stepped down from the dais and rushed into his friends’ arms.

Tired of running away, Tinker turned and trotted towards Richard, all sweetness as she pushed her head into his hands. Richard broke into helpless laughter and kissed her nose, and Edward felt something in him breaking gently. To think he had known Richard half his life. To think how much and how little had passed between them both. How old and strange Edward felt now; and far away, and alone.

\---

Edward was thirteen, and itchy, and standing on the riverbank in his undershirt, shouting at his friends.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you about _river fever?”_ he demanded, slapping at another mosquito that had landed on his knee. “You get it from the flies that live near rivers, and it makes you vomit up all your insides until you _die._ It’s incurable, not even the healers can reverse it, and—“ A fly darted past Edward’s ear, and he ducked, violently flailing his arms to shoo it away. The other boys, who were up to their necks in the middle of the river, all burst out laughing.

“And the current,” Edward continued in a heated tone, ignoring them. “The river wasn’t nearly this high yesterday. What if the current strengthens and sweeps you all away?”

“Edward,” Michael said patiently. “I’ve been swimming in rivers my entire life, and this one is as calm as I’ve ever seen it. You’re not going to be swept away by the current, and you’re not going to get river fever.” He waded over to Edward and held out his hand. “If you do, I give you full permission to run me through with your sword. On my honor.”

“When my stomach’s been turned completely inside out, running you through will bring me little comfort,” Edward grumbled—but he stepped down so that his feet were wet, and then he walked a little farther, and a little farther, and then he was undeniably _in the river._

It was colder than he’d expected, but strangely, Edward found he liked it—the new feel of the water as it gurgled and rushed gently around him, a wild living thing, waking him up. A leaf floated past, spinning on the current, and Edward reached out and brushed his hand against it. It tickled his palm.

“See?” William said, swimming over. “You’re s-smiling.”

“I am _not,”_ Edward insisted, and sank into the water up to his chin. He glanced surreptitiously at the others and paddled his hands the way they were doing, though his feet remained planted firmly on the riverbed.

“Try it on your back,” Richard said, startling Edward by popping up out of nowhere. Clearly happy to be showing off, Richard rolled over like an otter so that he was floating on the surface of the water, and then let his limbs drift lazily out from his sides.

Watching him dumbly, Edward shook his head. “I can’t swim. I—I don’t know how.”

“You don’t need to. You know about buoyancy, don’t you?” Benjamin asked, rubbing his nose and blinking water out of his eyes. “Your body is less dense than the water is, so that means you’ll float on your own. All you have to do is trust the water to carry you.”

“Well,” Edward muttered. “I don’t.”

Michael and William glanced at each other. “Raise your feet,” Michael said, and reached for Edward’s shoulder. Edward yelped and tried to wriggle away, but then both boys were holding him, their hands under his back and knees, lifting him up. William winced as Edward tried to splash him in the face. “Stop f-flailing, you great goose, that’ll only make you sink faster—”

“They’re right,” Richard said, alarmingly close to Edward’s ear. He’d swum over without Edward noticing. “Relax, and don’t think of anything. Whatever you’re fretting about, just let it all—run out your ears.”

Edward gave him a mighty scowl, and Richard laughed. “Just let go,” he urged, and then Edward felt Richard’s hand slip firmly underneath his back, between his shoulders, holding him. “We’ve got you.”

It wasn’t easy, but Edward lay back and let his friends lift him to the river’s surface. Gradually, he felt the tension in his muscles ebb away with the flow of the river. The water rose up and covered his ears, turning all sound into a pleasant murmur.

“Edward,” Richard said, and it took a moment to realize he sounded farther away. “Did you notice? We aren’t holding you anymore.”

At the realization, Edward panicked, and instantly he sank like a river stone. Stanley and Benjamin rescued him at once, and spluttering furiously, Edward repeated all of the curses he’d picked up from the marketplace in the city—but even then, he was beginning to turn the small treasure of it over in his mind, a memory he would keep for many years. The way it had felt for a moment to be floating all on his own without knowing it. To have given himself completely over to the water, letting it carry him.

\---

It was early morning as they rode through the seaside town that ringed the beach—a place called Saescill, so small Edward had not even recalled it appearing on the map. His heart began to pound like a drum as they reached the dunes and began to cross. His skin tingling, his nose prickling with the cold, salt-speckled wind. _This is it,_ he thought. The end, and the beginning.

They had heard it before they saw it; a great rushing sound, that grew and grew and ended in what sounded like a thousand little thunderclaps all at once, before slowly receding backward into stillness. Then they crested the highest dune, and there it was—the sea, in the light of dawn.

Richard had been right; as skilled as he was at weaving words, there was nothing he could have said that would have compared to Edward seeing the sea for himself. There was so _much_ of it, in every direction he looked; the vastness of it pushed every other thought out of his mind. The rolling and shifting of the sea was ceaseless—its surface a soft heather gray, then pale blue where the lightening sky seemed to dip down to touch it, and a jeweled rosy-golden hue much farther out, where the sun was coming up over the line of the horizon.

Gray-and-white birds, which Edward realized must be gulls, circled above the cliffs and gave odd piercing cries, diving down to snatch fish from the waves. Even the tangled smell of the water, of salt and minerals and unseen living things, was like nothing he had ever known. Edward breathed in deep, filling his lungs, and it felt like the first gulp of air he had ever taken in his life; as though he had only ever been half-breathing before.

Carefully, he lifted his foot from the stirrup and swung his leg over to lower himself from the saddle. “I want to go for a swim,” Edward said.

“It’ll be cold,” Richard said.

The wind whipped at his hair, filled his lungs with a sharpness that was so sweet Edward felt a lump rise in his throat, as if a song was about to break from his lips. “I know,” he replied. Shucking his armor and his outer layers until he was standing in only his tunic and underclothes, he dropped his things onto the ground, stepped out of his boots, and then he was running across the beach.

Edward was surprised by the sand, at how his feet slipped and sank into it, but still he kept running. He tripped over the rocks and into the shallow water where the waves lapped at the shore, through clumps of some sort of dark grass that was floating on the surface, and the thick white foam churning around his ankles. Then he waded further out, toward the sun, struggling against the tide and the clouds of sand beneath the water that it pushed in—and then he was free of the shore, his feet no longer touching bottom. Edward was rocking in the waves like a child in a cradle; a stronger motion than he had felt in any river, that made him dizzy at first, then weightless as he learned to move with it. The icy water cleared his head, sending a thrill through his whole body.

Feeling bold then, Edward plunged underneath the surface—and emerged gasping, his eyes stinging. “It really is _salty,”_ he exclaimed, spitting and blinking hard to squeeze out the tears. But he was fighting a smile.

Then he heard a loud swearing from behind him, and turned and squinted through hot tears to see Richard in his underclothes, striding in after him. “Of all the gods-curst foolish things to do,” Richard gasped. He fell forwards and began to paddle against the current. “It’s colder than the Black God’s backside.”

Edward laughed and swam back to meet him, feeling his muscles wakening. “Surely a knight of the realm isn’t afraid of a little cold water,” Edward teased, splashing him. Richard ducked with a yelp of protest, only to splash him back even harder.

While their horses frolicked on the beach, Edward and Richard swam out as far as they dared—feeling out the tide, watching the tall sailing ships silhouetted in the distance and marveling at their shapes. There were a few houses built on the rock near the shore, and the people who lived there were going about their business; flapping their washing out onto sturdy clotheslines, and tucking baskets and pails under their arms as they clambered down the boulders.

The sun was higher now, flooding the autumn sky, and Edward realized anew with every second that passed how he was surrounded by brilliant, pure blue wilderness; how he could feel his ribcage struggling to expand and take it all in. _Here I am,_ he thought, beneath the sounds of the wind and the waves. _Here I am._

From out on the water rose a strain of sound, and then another from the shore behind them that rose to meet it. It was the fisher folk. They were singing; a merry, rhythmic song as their boats were rowed to shore. Their voices bold and strong like fine timber, they sang in harmony with one another even as they unloaded their catch—

_Oh, we bring home nets of silver_

_We bring home nets of gold_

_May our children be so lucky_

_And their children so grow old_

_We were born among the waves_

_Our hearts long for open seas—_

_And whatever storms may come_

_You’ll hear our song upon the breeze._

One silver-haired woman with a wiry frame leaped nimbly from her boat and onto the sand. Her clothes were dark with seawater, and she had a squat wooden bucket in her hands, the contents of which she showed to the tall youth holding her mooring-rope. He said something to her in excitement, and she laughed and kissed him soundly on the forehead. 

Then the woman turned, and saw Edward and Richard bobbing in the water. “Hi!” she called, waving her arm above her head. “You all right out there? If you’re hungry, you’re welcome to join us for breakfast.”

The two of them were mother and son; the young man was called Adrian, and he introduced his mother as Fiona. “Fair Fiona of the Deep is what they call her,” he said proudly as they climbed the steps to the small wooden deck that surrounded their house. He clapped his mother on the shoulder. “No one anywhere in the kingdom can hold their breath for so long or swim so well as her. She dives for pearls.”

“There’s a seamstress in the royal city who’s been asked to make a dress for the queen,” Fiona explained. She retrieved two towels from the kitchen table and handed them to Edward and Richard. “For the midwinter celebration, I’d expect. The seamstress asked for five dozen pearls for the bodice, so we’ll eat very well this season.” Wringing her own hair out over the deck railing, Fiona straightened up, grinning. “Where do you boys come from, if you don’t mind my asking? Not from around here, or we’d have certainly seen you before.”

Edward hesitated as he toweled his hair dry. He did not want to lie, but neither did he want to be Sir Edward the Brave just then. Thankfully, Richard caught the look on his face, and understood. “From the royal city. We’ve been in training to be the queen’s knights, you see,” Richard said, which was not untrue. “But Her Majesty has kindly given us leave for a while, that we might explore the kingdom and do heroic deeds in her name.”

“Knights, you say! How exciting,” Fiona said, at the same time Adrian burst out with, “A quest! You must have come over the mountains, then. Did you see any gryphons, or unicorns—”

Richard laughed. “Let us pay you for our meal, and I’ll tell you all the stories you want,” he replied.

Adrian and Fiona agreed, and so the four of them sat with their legs dangling off the edge of the deck, and shared a feast of scallops, tender and fat; a fresh mackerel with sweet pink flesh, steamed with ginger and green onions; ripe tomatoes, and boiled salted eggs, all of which they ate with their hands. It was only as he ate that Edward realized how ravenously hungry he was; the meal seemed like the most delicious one he had ever had. 

“The sea does that to you,” Fiona said, passing Edward another boiled egg. “Sometimes, if I’ve had a long day of diving, I can eat my weight in sausage and potatoes.”

Edward took the egg gratefully and smiled. “I’d forgotten that, about swimming. Though I’ve never swum in the sea before.”

“I figured,” Fiona said with a grin. “You’ve a landlubber’s look about you.”

“You can’t help it,” Adrian added, patting Edward’s hand comfortingly.

“Have you lodgings already hereabouts?” Fiona cocked her head. “You’re welcome to stay with us awhile, if not. My eldest, Bet, is away on a voyage, and her room will be empty for a while yet. There’s another young noble does the same who passes through here sometimes, so it’s no trouble.”

“That’s very kind of you both,” Edward said, just as a flurry of motion down the shore caught his eye. He turned to look, curious.

There was a small ship with a squared sail on a single mast, anchored by a large rock a little ways out—and a troop of men noisily making their way down the sand and through the shallows toward it. They bore nets, crossbows, and cruel-looking weapons that Edward recognized from books as harpoons, and they jeered and jostled one another as they waded towards their vessel. There were ten men all in all, and one boy who couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen, carrying a heavy-looking chest—a boy who looked to Edward as though he was deliberately putting on a cruel, careless expression. The boy saw Edward looking at him, bristled visibly, and stormed ahead.

“They won’t catch anything, if they’re only starting out at this time of day,” Richard remarked.

Adrian’s brow lowered, the corners of his mouth following. “Not fishing,” he said. “They’re not of the fisher folk. That’s a ballinger. A hunting ship.”

“What are they hunting?” Edward asked.

“Their own misfortune,” Fiona muttered. “They’re looking for the roc’s nest, the one who lives in the cliffs on the northeast side. We all tried to talk them out of it, but they won’t listen. They’re after her feathers and talons, and her eggs to boot.” She scoffed. “No fortune’s worth that kind of risk, and I say that as a woman who once swam fifteen leagues to shore with cargo from a sunken vessel.”

“Trickster Goddess.” Richard whistled. “How dangerous are the rocs, anyway?”

“Put it this way—we don’t bother them, precisely so they don’t bother us.” Fiona scowled deeply, watching as the ballinger weighed anchor and set off, its sail ballooning with the wind. “But those troublemakers are looking to stir up the nest. I hope the first sight of her scares them right off, for their own sakes as well as hers.”

Edward watched as the hunting ship sailed around the beach and disappeared behind the high cliffs to the northeast. Then, inevitably, his gaze wandered back to the water. With the sun higher now, it shone blue-green like crystal—and called out to him, even with him so near.

“It’s a lot to take in, I’d imagine,” said Fiona, her voice understanding. “And you’re lucky; today’s one of those rare days that it’s nearly clear as summer again.” She made a shooing motion. “Go on. Enjoy it.”

So Edward and Richard did—hopping across the burning sand on bare feet, with the breeze raking through their damp hair, and the hot blue swath of the noonday sky searing above them. The surface of the water had been warmed by the sun, but deeper down it was still blissfully cold, and Edward let himself bask in it. He swam back and forth along the coast with long strokes, then tumbled and dove until he could open his eyes underwater, catching glimpses of silvery schools of fish that darted away into the depths. Later, Adrian took his pole-skiff out on the water so Edward and Richard could clamber onto it, and then he rowed them southeast to where there was a small lagoon with a clear pool, and a lacelike waterfall that trickled over the entrance to a shallow cave, that weather and time had hollowed out in the mossy rock face.

Richard soon tired of swimming, and he lounged in the skiff attempting to coax a tune out of a shell-and-bone flute that Adrian had lent him. Edward, on the other hand, only felt more awake than before—so with the tide lower now, he swam to the great rock and climbed it, just so he could sit on it and gaze out at the seemingly unending sea. Whenever a wave struck the rock, the spray scattered the light into a dozen colors, and Edward thought he would never grow tired of seeing it. _Wild magic,_ he thought, drinking in the salty air.

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but eventually he noticed the colors of the afternoon had begun to change. The crests of the waves were burnished orange and gold by the setting sun, and the last of the sails was disappearing into the mist. Adrian and Richard had taken the skiff back to land long ago, but still Edward swam—fighting the tide, launching himself into the rolling waves even as they crashed against him and pushed him back, and he pushed forward, again and again.

His throat stung. He was gasping for breath now, the shocking cold threatening to squeeze his heartbeat from his chest, and still he swam. He thought of nothing; he was no one. Just a body cutting through the rhythm of the sea, so small in the midst of everything.

The moon faded into view, and Edward returned to shore.

A kettle of fresh water had been boiled so they could sluice off warmly, and they lay the day’s clothes out on the deck, weighted down by rocks so nothing would blow away. Washed and changed, Edward and Richard then helped Adrian and Fiona dig a pit in the sand for a fire, which they cooked supper in and sat by, listening to it crackle and spit over the gentle crashing of the waves.

At night, the sea was as black as ink. Edward wrapped his hands around his mug of hot whiskey, made with cloves and lemon, and lifted his face to the icy evening wind so he could watch the stars come out. His hair had dried stiffly, and there was sand in the cuffs of his breeches, which he did not bother shaking out.

Adrian and Richard had been talking, Richard spinning their encounter with the troll into a gloriously exaggerated tale—but then Adrian had caught sight of a friend who owed him money and excused himself so he could chase after them, and then Fiona went to bed after a stern reminder that they put the fire out properly. Which left Edward and Richard, alone once more.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” Richard commented, moving to sit closer to him. “This whiskey is so strong, I thought by now you’d either be sobbing into your hands about your first long-lost love, or trying to start a fistfight with a seagull.” Then he saw Edward’s face, and stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Edward said, and put his whiskey down.

“Don’t try that with me.” Richard frowned. “You were so happy earlier today, I thought...Edward, just tell me. Did something happen?”

Edward turned it over in his head until he had the words. “I just don’t want—to have come all this way only to have proved something to her,” he murmured finally, and Richard did not have to ask who he meant. “I wanted it to have been to...prove something to myself, I suppose.” He inhaled. “Find some answers to the questions I had.”

Richard watched his face and waited. “And did you find them, your answers?” he asked, when Edward did not speak again. 

Edward laughed and threw a handful of sand down at his feet. “I don’t know,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t even know if I remember the questions. Isn’t that strange? Even after all of this, being here, I still don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Richard said softly. “I don’t...I wish I knew what to—“ His voice was low and rough in his throat, barely above a whisper. Edward wasn’t looking at him, but the tone of Richard’s voice was enough to make him feel like he was breaking open.

“Don’t.” Edward closed his eyes; shut out the stars and the firelight and the waves on the shore. “It’s all right, I just...I don’t think I can talk anymore tonight.” It was a long, unbearable stretch of time before he heard Richard get up and trudge across the sand, in the direction of Adrian and his friends’ voices, and longer still before their voices faded.

He sat there alone as the wind rushed over the beach, pulling at his clothes and rippling through his bones. The sound of it was like a howl in Edward’s heart—but no longer was it urging him to move on. _What now?_ it asked. _What now, what now?_

\---

It was at daybreak that the roc attacked the ship.

At the earth-rending shrieks, the whole house woke and rushed out onto the deck, and from the shore they saw the nightmare unfolding. The ballinger from yesterday was out on the water; from the looks of it, it had been heading back ashore—but the roc filled the sky above it now, plunging cruel at its bow, churning furious waves up around its hull as she beat her massive wings.

With curved talons like scimitars, the roc tore through the ballinger’s sail. Then, in a single motion, she ripped the mast up like a storm uprooting a tree. The sailors cried out. The roc beat her wings harder, her wingbeats carrying like rolls of thunder—and then she drove the ship down into the waves, as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy. 

The waves surged over the deck of the ballinger as it split in two with a terrible sound, the great beams of timber splintering, the men plunging into the sea. The roc let out a triumphant, silver scream. Against the rising sun, her silhouette was limned in fire. She was mighty and horrifying and beautiful.

On the shore, the other fisher folk had gathered around them, shouting in rage and despair. Then one of the sailors clinging to the half of the ship still afloat, though it was sinking fast, mustered the strength to lift his arm and hurl a harpoon at the roc. It struck her low in the belly, but it was enough. The roc screamed again, this time in agony—and then she was flailing, falling, crashing into the water.

The waves that the roc’s body made submerged the pieces of the ballinger, and then rippled out, growing smaller and smaller as they approached the land—until they were small, benign waves that tumbled gently onto the sand, as they would on any other day. The men were not screaming now. 

Edward could not take his eyes from the wreckage. The broken mast. Broken bodies, already being borne away on the current. _That boy,_ he thought, and felt sick. 

“Gods and goddesses.” Next to him, Adrian was breathing hard, his fists pressed tightly to his sides and his eyes glinting with unshed tears. “Should we—should someone take a skiff out and try to—”

“We’ll go with you,” a woman said, and several others nodded. 

One old man pulled his hat from his head, gripping it in wrinkled hands. “We warned them, and warned them,” he rumbled. “Fools they were, and they have paid the price.”

But Edward did not hear them. “Are there others?” he asked roughly. His hands were shaking.

Adrian looked at him. “Edward,” he whispered.

 _“Are there others?”_ Edward repeated. “You said…” He turned to Fiona. “You said there were eggs, didn’t you?”

“Their nesting season’s just gone,” a small girl said, pointing at the northeast cliffs before anyone could stop her. “It—it lived there.”

“It’s not worth it, lad,” Fiona said. Her voice was calm but firm. “Don’t do this.”

“I don’t care,” Edward said, whirling and making his way back up the beach. “We have to go, we have to—“ 

Then he realized, and turned back.

Richard was still standing by the water’s edge. He had not moved, save for lifting his head to regard him. “Edward,” he said. There was confusion in his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“We need to make sure there aren’t more—that they don’t—“ Why wasn’t he moving? Couldn’t he _see?_

“You heard what they said. Rocs are peaceful creatures unless provoked.” Shaking his head, Richard crossed the sand to meet him. “We shouldn’t interfere any further.”

The sickening cold spread up from the pit of Edward’s stomach. “And if it had young? Who is to say that after they fledge, they will not attack?”

“They _won’t._ Listen to me, Edward. This is not a battle you can win, nor one you should attempt,” Richard said quietly. “Let the sea claim its dead, and do not bring any more misfortune down on these people.”

“In doing so you risk their safety, what—a year from now? A season? A day?” Edward curled his hands into fists, nails pressed deep into his palms. “You might be willing to risk that, Richard, but I am not. Stay if you wish, but I am going.” He turned away again.

A broad hand closed around his arm. Richard was gripping him hard. “Let _go,”_ Edward bit out, while inside his head, a small part of him was screaming, _it’s now that you decide to touch me? Now, only to hold me back?_

“No.” Richard’s gaze was filled with steady resolve. “You would be a fool to throw your life away for this.”

The words were like a stab to Edward’s heart. “A fool, am I?” he said slowly. “Do you think all of this has been a fool’s errand, then?” 

“Edward.” Richard’s expression turned to one of shock. “No.”

“Is that the true reason why you were so insistent on journeying with me? Because you thought I was in need of protection? Because you think I am _weak?”_ Edward felt lightheaded, and he realized it was because breathing had suddenly become more difficult. He did not care. He had thought Richard trusted him, he had thought he was his friend, he had thought—

“If you knew me, you would know I do not think so little of you.” Richard’s eyes flashed dark. 

“Do not lie to me,” Edward snapped. “Have you _ever_ spoken to me truly? You, who speaks in jests and drinking songs and fairytales? I wager not a single word of truth has left your mouth since the day you were born.”

Richard did not break his gaze. The air around them was pulled tight like a net. “For all that we are sworn friends, Edward, you have not heard me,” he said, his voice low. “You know nothing of my heart.”

Edward laughed. “What should I have heard?” he demanded. “What of your heart? Whatever it is, it has no bearing now.”

“I will not watch you die,” Richard said coldly. “Do not ask me to.”

Edward returned his gaze, meeting steel with steel. “I ask nothing of you, _sir,”_ he replied in a mocking tone. “Take your leave of me, then, if you will not join me now.”

Richard turned away.

Back at the house, Edward gathered his bow and arrows, his sword and his shield. He did not waste time with saddling or bridling his horse. He wore no armor. Gripping Squall’s mane, he turned them northeast, and they galloped hard and fast towards the towering sea-cliffs. 

Squall was a nimble animal, and he managed the rocky terrain as though he had been born to it. But soon, they reached a point after which the cliff was too steep for any horse. Edward dismounted, soothing Squall and pointing him to a patch of grass, to keep him from venturing too close to the edge. Then Edward raised his eyes to the clouds above the cliff, set his hands upon the stone, and continued the climb alone.

\---

Alone, the knight scaled the massive rocky cliff. The north wind raked across him like a wild beast’s claws, attempting to buffet him from side to side. He did not have to look down to know he was far, far above the sea, and his every step dislodged a shower of pebbles that went plummeting hundreds of feet into the roiling waters below. 

Edward’s whole body was still tired and aching from yesterday, and his arms and hands screamed with the effort of holding onto the sheer cliff face. Still he climbed, up and up—until he reached the flat surface of the narrow, craggy peak. Pulling himself up and over the edge, sucking in gulps of the thinning air, Edward lifted his head and looked to where a tangle of thorny bushes formed the roc’s nest.

He heard the high, pitiful cries before he saw it. The roc fledgling was huddled in one corner of the nest, wings hunched up around its head as it watched him with fearful eyes. Scattered around the creature, among the thorns, were the last few clumps of downy feathers it had shed. Edward had been right; it was at most a few days away from being able to fly. Perhaps it had already tried and been unsuccessful, or perhaps it had been born this way; one of the fledgling’s wings was twisted, and it stuck out at a painful-looking angle.

Edward’s hand was already on the hilt of his sword. He thought of the people in the village down below, of the sunken ship in the harbor and the men who would not be going home to their families tonight—and he felt in him the fire that would not go out, the rage that burned wild in his bones. He unsheathed his sword, and set its point at the fledgling roc’s throat. 

The bird did not cry out. It blinked, and shivered a little.

And then, inexplicably, Edward was struck by a thought. Of what his friend Stanley would say, if he found out that Edward had slaughtered a young, motherless bird not even out of the nest. And then he thought of his other friends, William and Michael and Benjamin and Kay and Beverly—and he thought of Richard, who had been so angry because he had not wanted him to die. 

Edward thought of the falcons that so loved the sky and the freedom they had to fly in it, and of the seagulls over the ocean that squabbled from dawn to dusk. He thought of an oath he had sworn, and the promises he had made, and the things that must end and what must begin. And he knew, as he had perhaps known all along, that if he did this now he would lose. He would lose everything.

Edward lowered his sword.

The roc let out a feeble croak. “I am so sorry,” Edward whispered to it. “Don’t be frightened. Please.” 

All at once he remembered something, and he fumbled with the pouch at his waist. Pulling out the slab of dried beef he had kept there, Edward tore off a small piece and dropped it into the nest. The roc screeched in alarm, but then it scented the beef and approached it warily, sniffing. It pecked at it, and then scooped it up in its beak and gulped it down whole. 

Edward tore up the rest of the beef and made a little heap of it in the opposite corner of the nest, and then constructed a splint out of the least thorny branch he could find and his own handkerchief. Coaxing the roc closer with one of the scraps of meat, he took its wing carefully and tied the splint around it.

“You’ll be wanting to fly soon,” Edward murmured, as the roc turned its attention to the rest of the beef and began to devour it eagerly. “Once you’re healed, you’ll be able to get out of that splint on your own, and find the others of your kind.” He swallowed. “Live well,” he said. “May no one ever hunt you again.”

The roc squeaked loudly, braver now, and in spite of himself, Edward smiled.

And then Edward turned, intending to spot a route back down the cliff. But he had not noticed that the ground on the edge of the cliff, just behind where he was standing, was loose—so when he took a step back, the place where his foot landed gave way completely.

Edward fell.

\---

Something closed around the wrist of his sword arm; a loop, pulling taut. It yanked up, stopping his fall short, and for a second Edward felt as though his arm was going to be pulled clean out of its socket. But then he felt something beneath him, supporting him.

It was a strong gust of rising wind, that raised goosebumps across his skin and filled his nostrils with a sharp, clean scent that seemed familiar even through his panic. The world was turned over, his field of view a dizzying haze; the green-gray of the sea and the blue of the sky melding together so that he no longer knew which way was up—and then Edward was soaring through the air. It was as if invisible hands were pushing him up, or as if he was borne on a cloud. 

Then there were real, warm hands around him, arms around him; someone holding onto Edward tight and pulling him up over the ledge and into them, so that they both went crashing down onto solid rock, solid earth. 

Rolling off and sprawling flat on his back, Edward gasped wildly for breath. The air was spread too thin. His eyes watered; he couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. All he could see was blue. 

And then a shadow blotted out the sun, a blurry face appearing above his.

“Breathe,” a voice said, clearer now. A hand slid under his spine and rolled him onto his side, and Edward felt the relief of it as his chest relaxed. The hand patted him awkwardly. “That’s it. Just breathe. You’re all right.”

He _was_ all right. Shapes and definitions were forming in his vision again, their too-bright edges receding. Edward breathed in, and out, and in again. He was alive.

“You’re breathing into my face,” Edward croaked.

Richard sat back, and Edward sat up gingerly. Everything hurt. “Richard,” he rasped. “But…you left. I thought you—”

“You stubborn _mule,”_ Richard interrupted angrily, but he wasn’t really angry. He reached up and held Edward’s face in his dusty palms, pushing his hair back from his forehead and searching his eyes, cradling him. “How could I do anything but come back for you?”

Richard’s hands were so warm that Edward almost forgot how to speak. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. His own hands had fallen clumsily on Richard’s waist. “I shouldn’t have—“

“Stop,” Richard said. He was shaking his head fiercely, his eyes blazing. “Just stop.”

Edward stopped. “How,” he began—and then he glanced away and saw something lying a few feet away. It was the little velvet sack covered in stars, the one that Richard had had on his saddlebag, but open and seemingly empty.

Richard sighed and let go of Edward, looking as though doing so was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. Then he reached down and scooped something up from the ground, holding it out so Edward could see.

Edward blinked. There was a tangled length of silvery, almost translucent thread lying in Richard’s hand. Even if Edward hadn’t noticed the subtle way it shimmered, he could feel that the thread thrummed lightly with magic. “Kay,” Edward said. He extended one finger to touch it, and when he did, the thread disintegrated into nothing.

“It’s all right, it was only meant to be used once,” Richard said, brushing his hand off on his breeches. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I asked Kay for a spell of protection before we left,” he continued softly. “It was no unicorn hair thread, she told me, but she said that we could use it when we needed it most.” Then he looked stricken. “Er, that is to say, I didn’t think _you_ would need it, exactly, I know you can take care of yourself, of course—but it’s just that you always say it’s good to be prepared, and I thought—“

But he did not finish, for Edward had thrown his arms around Richard and squeezed tight. “You were right,” Edward mumbled into Richard’s shoulder. “All of this—I shouldn’t have come up here. I know that now.”

He felt Richard’s chest rise and fall as he huffed out a laugh. “You were right, too, about one thing,” Richard replied. His hands came up to rest lightly on Edward’s back. “I haven’t been honest with you. In fact, I’ve been a coward. From the day we were knighted, I haven’t been able to tell you.”

Edward drew back. “What do you mean?” His heart was pounding again as though he were still falling.

Richard’s eyes were glistening. “Edward,” he said—and somehow he knew exactly what Edward wanted in that moment, because he moved one hand up to cup Edward’s face again.

“You asked me why I came with you,” he murmured, running his thumb across the line of Edward’s cheekbone. “The truth is, it was because I had just realized that I was in love with you. That I love you. It took me years to understand, and when I finally did I didn’t know how to tell you, but when you said you were leaving, I knew—all I wanted was to be with you.”

Edward knew what it was like to be struggling to breathe. But this was different from all the other times before. Like the first heady rush of pollen in the wind in springtime; the last moment underwater just before you came up for air. “I never knew,” Edward whispered, but he knew it was untrue as soon as he said it. “No, that’s not it. There were times when I saw…something, and I think maybe part of me knew, but then I didn’t want to—assume—“

“Edward,” Richard breathed, shaking his head incredulously. “I sang a love song to you. I wrote a song _for_ you.”

“Yes, and it was terrible,” Edward said grouchily.

Richard was smiling at him like he never wanted to stop. “It’s a work in progress.”

Feeling scared and brave all at once, Edward tilted his face into Richard’s palm. Then he rested his own hand against Richard’s cheek, watching Richard suck in his breath, eyes wide as he did. “There’s something I have to tell you, too,” Edward said. “But not now.”

Richard let out another laugh, shakier. His fingers curled around Edward’s wrist. “Not now, when we have held back for years?”

“No, Richard, because we are on a cliff, and I would like very much to get down from it before we continue this conversation,” Edward said. “And I would also prefer level ground underneath my feet when I tell you what I need to tell you.”

And then they were both giggling hysterically and holding each other, touching each other just because they could—and Edward finally let himself press his face into the hollow of Richard’s neck, and close his eyes, and breathe out.

\---

They stayed in Saescill for over a fortnight, in the room Fiona and Adrian had let to them. After the first few days, Adrian’s redheaded older sister Bet had surprised them all by coming home, her ship in the harbor bearing treasures from across the ocean—and the whole village welcomed the crew back with a night of feasting and stories. 

“Keep the room for as long as you need,” Bet told Edward and Richard easily. “I’ll put my hammock out on the deck; I’ve come to prefer it, anyway, and I need time to get my land-legs back. I hope the pallet’s comfortable, even if it is a little small for two,” she added, at which point Edward attempted to drown himself in his tankard.

It didn’t take long for Edward to feel he was fitting into the rhythm of life there, in the little windswept village. He saw the sea in all her moods and colors, and grew used to the way the briny air plastered his clothes to his limbs and left a tacky sheen of dampness on his skin. He even grew used to the way sand was inevitably tracked everywhere, how he was forever shaking it out of his clothes and his boots and his hair.

Edward scrubbed fishing boats and learned to make handwoven fish traps, and he collected seashells he thought Beverly would like and learned their names for her. At low tide on calm days, Fiona showed Edward how to watch closely for bubbles in the shallow water, and then dive down and use clam shells to dig the live clams from the sand. After they had collected a bucketful of fresh clams, Adrian and Richard would cook them at once in butter, garlic, and a little wine; and they would have lunch on the deck as the sea breeze ruffled their hair.

There were countless small magics that Edward witnessed, too—some that were surprises to him, like the edge of a tailwind being tied up in a sail, to be let out on windless days when a sailor might need it. Others were things he might not have noticed unless they were pointed out to him; the way the bottom of a coracle was made sturdier, or a roof was patched over, or a house beam was fortified. He was even taught a few remedies by the village witch, Maithurinn, and Edward remembered anew the satisfaction he found in assisting in healing. How capable the body was of knitting itself back together, if it was set right with a little help and given time to rest.

Adrian and Bet taught Edward to man the skiff, and he reveled in the satisfying feeling of catching the wind in its sail, the canvas snapping taut and full as Edward steered the boat and coasted it smoothly over the waves. (“We’ll make a sailor of you yet,” Bet told him approvingly.) Edward explored rock pools and discovered tiny ghostlike crabs that scuttled sideways, and sea flowers and sea urchins and sea stars—and he sat looking at them and thought that he didn’t know much of anything at all.

Not long after Bet returned, they received yet another surprise, when a merchant ship docked in the harbor. Adrian rowed out to ferry its passengers to shore, and Edward, Richard, and Bet stood on the sand and shielded their eyes to squint at the figures climbing down onto the pole-skiff. Bet laughed as they came more clearly into view, and flung her arms into the air and waved. “Ahoy, Denbrough!” she yelled, and one of the figures on the skiff delightedly shouted “Ahoy!” in reply.

It _was_ George of Denbrough, William’s younger brother—fair-haired and beaming from ear to ear as he jumped from the skiff and waded through the shallows in great strides. “I say!” he exclaimed. “That’s not Edward and Richard, is it?”

“You know these landlubbers?” Adrian asked, grinning.

“Landlubbers they may be, but a finer pair of dragonslayers Derry has never seen.” George grinned too, then faltered at the incomprehension dawning on Adrian’s face. “What, did they not tell you?”

“We didn’t think it was important,” Edward mumbled.

“Didn’t think it was—?” Adrian spluttered incredulously. But Richard cut in with, “Little Georgie! Is it possible you’ve grown even taller since we last saw you at the castle? You’ll be looming over me next!”—and in the reunion that followed, Edward was grateful that no one had the chance to ask any more.

The little household was even more jolly after the young ambassador’s arrival. He had business in the north, George said, and would make the journey after a few days’ rest here. So for now, he was more than happy to go fishing and clamming with the rest of them, and regale them with stories of the many adventures he had had in the countries across the sea. (“Once I was even kidnapped and held for ransom! But it turned out all right,” George said, as casually as if he had said he’d lost a button and found it again.) With the new addition to their party, the five of them bathed in the nearby lagoon with its green water, and made a day trip to a small cove with a cave full of strange pointed rocks that jutted down from the ceiling, glowing worms dotting the rock like stars in the sky. 

“Tell my brother to get his nose out of those books and join us here sometime, will you?” George pleaded, on the day he was to depart. “See if you can get him here in the summer. I think you’d all love it in the summer when it’s much warmer.”

In spite of the growing cold, and whether his companions joined him or not, Edward swam every day. He swam until his lips started to turn blue and his fingertips wrinkled, and Richard began to tease Edward that they would stay like that forever. “Like raisins!” Richard said mournfully, even as he held Edward’s hands tightly in his own to warm them. 

With Richard, much of it was the same as it had always been. They bickered and insulted one another and laughed. But there was a new, shy thrill, too, when they caught one another’s eye across the room; when Richard grinned at him or when Edward made a face back, or when their hands brushed as they passed one another on their way down the steps. 

“You look at him like he hung the moon,” Bet told Edward one day when they were cleaning out the skiff. “All dopey.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Adrian said with a knowing grin, while Edward, horrified at having been noticed, threw the soapy sponge at him. 

He was happy, Edward thought. This time was peaceful, and he was enjoying it. But there was a small thread of sadness woven through the days, deep below the surface, that he could not speak of aloud. On some days he sat on the shore alone and looked upon the crashing waves—at the terror and the beauty of all that had been kept from him, and all he had sought to find—and it dawned upon him again that he was no less lost than he had been when he’d started.

They did not speak of it until one afternoon, when Edward was sitting with his feet in a rock pool, shucking a basket of oysters and abalone with his knife. _“With a fish in my hand and a bird in the sea,”_ Edward sang softly under his breath. _“And a boat on the land, and my boot in a tree.”_ Then he stopped when he saw Richard picking his way across the mossy rocks to meet him. 

“Let me know if I’m interrupting your woolgathering,” Richard said. “Goodness knows you don’t do enough of it.”

“It’s fine.” Edward raised his eyebrows. “And what are you talking about, I do plenty of woolgathering.”

“Not the way the rest of us do. It’s like you’ve always got busy little wagon wheels spinning inside your head.” Richard rolled up the legs of his breeches. “Were you _singing,_ my dove?” he asked as he lowered his feet into the pool and sat next to Edward, close enough that their hips touched.

Edward felt a small curling warmth, satisfaction and pleasure in the pit of his stomach. He kicked Richard’s foot gently with his own underwater. “Not really singing. Just that old nonsense song, you know.”

“Hmm. I don’t think I do, actually.”

“Liar. You’re just trying to get me to sing again.” But Edward did sing it again, and then when Richard looked puzzled, Edward repeated, “Surely you know it, you must have heard it as a child.” 

A wondering smile spread across Richard’s face. “I really don’t think I did. Are you sure you didn’t make it up?”

“Not me, it was—“ Edward stopped. “My mother. She loved to sing. Before.” 

Richard was still, watching his face. Edward’s thumb found the rounded edge of the abalone shell he held and ran along it, pressing a line into his skin. “She played the harp, too,” he said. “It’s strange…I didn’t realize until now that I’d forgotten that.”

A memory surfaced, unbidden; his mother dusting the mantel, her back to him as she sang to herself. Shaking it off, Edward reached for Richard’s hand, turning it over and pulling it gently into his lap. He traced the blue veins in Richard’s wrist, then ran his fingertips from the center of Richard’s palm outward until their fingers were aligned, before lacing them together.

“Are you studying me, my darling?” Richard asked with clear amusement. “Will you pin me to a sheet under glass, like a butterfly?”

“Shush,” Edward said. “I’m...remapping you. Relearning.” He lifted Richard’s hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to it briefly, a smile against his knuckles, before returning to his work.

They shared the silence for a while, Edward carefully prising the treasured abalone meat from each shell, Richard resting his weight back on his palms and tilting his face up to the light. It was something they had begun to find comfortable again; simply being in the same space without having to speak. The low, sweeping sound of the tide rushing in and the cry of distant gulls filled the air around them.

“I don’t know what to do after this,” Edward said after a while.

Richard hummed idly, eyes still half-lidded. “Make soup? Or you could stuff them with something, I suppose. Though I’ve come to quite like eating them raw.”

“I meant after we return home,” Edward said. He frowned as he picked up a large abalone and gently but firmly eased the knife underneath its edge. “I’ve been thinking...all of you found your callings a long time ago. And I thought by going on this journey, coming here, I could find mine.” His blade met resistance, and he pushed harder. “But we can’t stay here forever, and when we return, I don’t know what I’ll do next. All I know is, I don’t want to simply go back to what I was doing before.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with taking a little more time to figure it out,” Richard pointed out. “It’s not as though anyone’s demanding it of you, not even Beverly.”

“I know, but—” Edward hesitated. “It’s just...it still feels as though nothing that I’ve done means anything.”

Richard’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? The kingdom is free and at peace. Those youngsters at the castle now will not have to suffer all of the pains and indignities we did. They will laugh and play and tell stories and grow up under an unshadowed sky. Think of that.” He flung an arm out. “Look _around,_ my love. How can all of this not mean anything?”

“But that would have happened anyway,” Edward said in frustration. He looked up. “All of that would have happened anyway, without me, because all of you were there. And now that there are no more monsters left, I don’t know what more _I_ can do. What use is Sir Edward the Brave when all he knows how to do is fight? Being brave doesn’t _matter,_ I don’t _matter_ if I can’t—“

He broke off as a stabbing pain bloomed across the pad of his finger. In his frustration, he had accidentally cut it on the sharp ridged side of the abalone shell. 

Tutting, Richard reached into Edward’s pouch, which he had left on the ground next to him, and pulled out the vial of garlic and turmeric extract. Edward blinked, surprised that he had known which one to take.

“I _have_ picked up a thing or two from you, you know.” Richard grinned as he poured the vial over Edward’s hand to stop the bleeding. He wound a handkerchief around the cut finger gently, tying a firm knot over the wound and fiddling with the ends until they poked out like rabbits’ ears. “And I’ll thank you not to talk about yourself that way. You know we couldn’t have done it all without you. And you don’t have to slay manticores and trolls to prove your worth. You’re _enough,_ Edward.”

“Being enough as a person isn’t the same as being enough as a knight, and you and I know it,” Edward retorted. “Being a knight means—being called beyond yourself.”

Richard thought. “Why did you become a knight?” he asked finally, patiently. “What did you imagine life as a knight was going to be like?”

Edward looked down at his bandaged finger. “This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this.”

“Indeed.” Richard smiled. “And I remember what you said the first time I asked, when we were boys. You said you wanted to become a hero, like in the stories.”

“Endless battles,” Edward said wryly. “Beheading evildoers. Rescuing maidens. That sort of thing.”

Richard nodded. “And then we learned, and we grew up, and you said that no matter what happened in the end, you wanted to do what was right. What was good.”

“We all did.” Edward rolled his eyes. “And if I remember correctly, you always mentioned that _you_ wanted to be a knight because you looked good in armor.”

“Well, I do, don’t I? Or do you like me better out of it?”

Edward pushed Richard into the pool.

After Richard had clambered back up, shaking the water from his hair, he said, “Maybe a different question will help. What makes you happy, Edward?”

Edward frowned. “That feels like the wrong question to ask. You are asking me what I want for myself.”

He felt Richard’s fingertips cold and light on his jaw, turning his face towards him tenderly. “Do you not think that the good you have to offer the world should also be part of what makes _you_ happy?” Richard asked. He tucked Edward’s hair behind his ear. “Something you truly want to do, and something you find satisfaction in working hard at? It doesn’t even have to be just one thing. I’m sure that with time, you could find any number of things that you can do.”

“When did you become the wiser one of the two of us?” Edward grumbled, dropping his gaze as he felt the blush start.

“Oh, I’ve always been the wiser one.” Richard curled his fingers loosely, stroking Edward’s cheek with his knuckles. “And I meant what I said. Who you are, who you’ve always been, matters already. You didn’t have to become a knight for your life to mean something.”

It didn’t feel like the truth. But Edward thought that for now, if he could not believe it, he could at least believe in Richard’s faith in him. Perhaps for now, that was enough. He reached up, catching Richard’s hand and gently circling his wrist with his fingers. “What about you?” Edward asked. “What would make you happy?”

“Cheeky dove. We aren’t talking about me.” Richard tilted his head. “Besides, I already have everything I could ever want.”

“That’s not—that is cheating, you are _flirting,_ and also, perfect contentment is not at all humanly possible,” Edward spluttered.

“I may be flirting, but I am not lying,” Richard replied with a slow, easy smile, that sent a familiar shiver all the way through Edward. “You make me happy. I finally know how to say it. I finally know how to say it to _you._ What could be wrong with that?”

Edward had no words to answer him. Instead, he leaned into Richard and kissed the salt from his lips. After he pulled back, he slipped one of the opened oyster shells into Richard’s hand, and held up another. They toasted, and Edward tipped his head back and let the soft meat slide over his tongue and down his throat, raw and whole.

There was a small celebration the fisher folk held in the autumn, called the Festival of Stars. At sundown, all the villagers hung paper lanterns on the boats, which then set out on the water so that their lights might fill the night. Edward and Adrian spent the afternoon making lanterns for their household, one for each of them to secure to Bet’s boat. They pushed her off, and then all sat shoulder to shoulder on the sand to watch the lights of the whole village join theirs, bobbing on the sea, flickering in the wind. It did look as though the stars had floated down from the sky to hover just above the waves. “Magic,” Fiona said knowingly.

As the evening settled in, the villagers traipsed back and forth across the sand, greeting one another and trading food and hot spiced wine. There was roast pig from one of the sand pits, and octopus cooked in a sweet, milky broth. Fiona had pulled thick wool blankets from her wooden chest, and Edward and Richard shared one, sitting close enough that they could wrap it around both their shoulders. Richard had brought out his lute, figuring that one night of being exposed to the sea air wouldn’t harm it too badly—and so they had a night of music as well, their voices competing with the wind that rolled over the beach. They sang all their favorite old tavern songs, and then Fiona sang one she remembered from when she was younger, which turned out to be so colorful that even Richard hid his face in his hands.

Leaning contentedly against Richard, Edward clapped and sang along and laughed until his chest ached. In the quiet moments, however, he made himself really look at Richard. At his nimble, clever hands that flew across the lute strings, and the lines that appeared at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. All the places on him that caught the firelight, and the way his eyes shone with it—and Edward thought again how strange it was, that he’d loved Richard for so much longer than he’d known. Whenever he remembered, the feeling swelled in his chest until he thought he might burst.

Love, he thought with a frown, was such a troublesome and wondrous creature. Edward did not think he had ever mistaken love for weakness, as Beverly had—but lately he had been wondering about how much love, at times, was inextricable from fear. You could be afraid of disappointing the person you loved; or hurting them, or not doing enough to deserve them. You could even be afraid for years to speak your love aloud, in case it destroyed everything. 

If you loved someone, you were afraid for them when they went marching into a roc’s nest, or a dragon’s den—not because you thought them weak, but because you wanted them to live. And sometimes, when they looked at you in a way they never looked at anyone else, and you felt your heart start to race—even reaching out to touch their hand could feel like the greatest act of courage in the world.

Edward knew fear well. Fear wasn’t always irrational, and it wasn’t the same as cowardice. But if it meant you never wanted anything between you to change, then your love risked holding the other person back. And he had learned, too, that being brave had less to do with ensuring you were never afraid, than it did learning the shape of your fear—so you knew how to hold it as you walked onward.

“What’s that one there?” Richard nudged Edward in the ribs and pointed up at the clouds that had begun to part, revealing glimmering stars.

Edward smiled faintly. “The Little Horse,” he said, grasping Richard’s hand and moving it to trace the constellation’s outline. “See the flowing mane and tail?”

“I do now,” Richard murmured. His lips were against Edward’s hair, and for a moment it was so impossibly sweet that Edward felt the threat of tears.

He had loved Richard from childhood, the same way he had fiercely loved all of his friends. Love had always been there, but now it had a different shape. And perhaps that was how it was supposed to be, Edward thought. It cast off old skins, and grew and changed with you. Enough to stretch across valleys and mountains and the seven seas.

Edward looked up. “Can I ask you something?” 

“It depends.” Richard pretended to mull it over. “Were you going to ask me to bring you a pearl as black as midnight and a conch as rosy as the dawn, for the merfolk to grant you passage into their watery kingdom? Or did you have in mind a golden egg—”

Ignoring him, Edward plowed on. “If I told you that you had the choice to return to the castle with me, or to go to the Great Lake for Samhain, what would you choose?”

Richard’s face changed. “Edward,” he began, but Edward shook his head and continued, “Because you’ve always had it. You’ve always had this choice, and I don’t want you to feel obligated to only me, regardless of.” He made a vague flailing gesture between them. “All of this.”

Richard was studying him. Then he said slowly, “If there’s a reason you’re trying to push me away—”

“I’m not pushing you away.” Edward squeezed his hand briefly but reassuringly underneath the blanket. “If you truly want to stay with me, then you know I will be grateful. And I know you weren’t lying to me either, about being happy.” He took a deep breath. “But don’t—don’t convince yourself you don’t deserve to find your own path, too.” 

It was a while before Richard spoke again. “I won’t deny it was good to be among the Family, that night,” he said. “And spending time with them did make me think...they deserve proper representation on the council, same as the rest of the towns and villages. We’ve done away with the old laws, but I think it’s high time we asked the player folk to take part in writing the new.”

“Of course,” Edward murmured. “You’re right, we should have thought of it before.” 

Richard nodded. “If I went to Samhain, I could ask if they would like to appoint a few representatives. They wouldn’t have to put down roots anywhere, they could simply come to the castle for council meetings every season or so. And I could help them.” The sea breeze tousled Richard’s hair as he looked thoughtfully out at the fishing vessels, his eyes bright. He was so _good,_ Edward thought, watching him; a pinched, hot feeling leaping to his eyes and tightening his throat. 

Then Richard smiled faintly. “And...I would like to see if I can find my ma and da, and my sisters again. Before, I didn’t have much time to waste on thinking of them, but now that the kingdom is safe, I realize I have so _much_ time, and I—” He broke off, looking somewhat bashful. “The Family hasn’t felt like a part of my world in years. So I suppose I didn’t realize going with them was something I could really do.” He looked down at Edward. “Not until you asked me.”

The constellations above them were shining brighter now. _River-road. The turning Wheel. The Wayfinder._ “You’ll have to leave soon,” Edward murmured, the meaning of it just sinking in as he said it. “If you want to have a hope of catching up with them.”

Richard took a breath. “I don’t...I don’t want you to think it’s because I’m eager to leave _you.”_

“I _know.”_ Edward’s eyes prickled. Why did Richard have to make things so difficult? “You should take Adrian with you,” he continued, turning his head away. “You know how much he’s been longing to see the rest of the kingdom.” 

“Hmm,” Richard said, a smile audibly creeping into his voice. “That’s an interesting response. I rather thought you’d say you were going to miss me.”

“Of course I will,” Edward said crossly. His throat was all closed up now. Likely it was from all that wine.

Richard seemed to understand. He did not touch Edward, or say he would miss him too. He lifted his chin and said, “The baker and her husband are teaching me to make ship’s biscuit tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?”

Edward rubbed at a grain of sand that had somehow blown into his eye. “Will you be pounding the dough?”

Richard chuckled. “I think quite a lot of dough-pounding is involved, yes.”

Edward took a deep breath and nodded, and gazed back out to where the lantern-filled boats were slowly returning to shore. “Then yes. I’ll go with you.”

\---

In the days before Richard was to leave, Edward kept himself busy with all the chores he could find. He left early in the mornings to knock on the door of Maithurinn’s cottage, asking if there were any more poultices for him to make, or herbs that he could sort. He asked Fiona at least twice a day if she was _sure_ the deck didn’t need scrubbing; so often that she finally took pity on him and gave him beeswax and linseed oil to polish the railings with. Whenever he came upon Richard making some preparation for his journey—stitching up a hole in his saddlebag, or folding his spare clothes—Edward stammered some excuse about needing to feed the horses, before turning on his heel and fleeing.

If he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t just that he was sad to see Richard go. There was a small hard stone of resentment and jealousy inside him, like the pit inside a fruit. _Don’t be so heartless,_ Edward told himself angrily as he smashed the chunk of beeswax into the wooden banister. _This is what_ you _wanted for him. You can’t begrudge him this._

But part of him felt—small and left behind, all the same. Richard knew where he was going and exactly what he had to do next. And Edward was still here, adrift. 

Adrian had gotten Fiona’s blessing to travel with Richard, to see the Great Lake and the castle, with the promise that he would be home in the spring. Fiona had entrusted her pony, Mallow, to him for the trip, and Adrian had confided in Edward his worry that Mallow would miss the sea. “He loves it so much, you see, and he’s a mighty swimmer,” Adrian said, tickling underneath Mallow’s chin. “We use him to introduce the yearlings to the water sometimes. Actually—perhaps you’d like to try it with your horse?”

So one afternoon, Edward led Mallow down the beach to try to teach Squall to swim. He and Mallow demonstrated how to enter the shallows step by step, and though Squall flattened his ears and bared his teeth at first, soon enough he was up to his knees in the sea with them.

Edward waded over to Squall and patted his nose, proud. “See? It’s not so bad, is it?” Squall snorted and shook his mane, and Edward began carefully picking bits of leaf out of Squall’s forelock. “What would you say to living here, then? We could do this every day.”

Squall blinked sternly at him, and Edward sighed. “Perhaps our time as defenders of the kingdom is done, old friend. No more glorious battles for us.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “What if I have to become a hermit? We could live in that cave to the southeast. You don’t mind eating seaweed every day, do you?” Squall whinnied in loud protest, and Edward laughed and scooped some water up to splash him. Then he heard someone humming, and he turned towards the shore to see where it was coming from. 

It was the old village witch, Maithurinn. He was sitting on a rock, his bare feet curled over the edge as he smoked a pipe with his eyes shut. “Sir?” Edward asked awkwardly, tripping back through the shallows to him. “I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you, I was just...”

“Thinking,” Maithurinn said with a rumble of assent. “Watching the sea is good for that, I’ve always thought. And I’ve told you not to call me ‘sir’.” He cracked one eye open. “I have no herbs left for you to sort, so unless you want to start sorting the cobwebs in the corners or my winter underthings, you’d better bother someone else. Something on your mind, boy?”

A weary exhale escaped Edward, and he picked his way across the pebbled sand. “It’s just that—so many people long to be free of anything resembling duty,” he began. “But there are others who need to feel like they have that duty, and that’s what I am. And I know my entire life isn’t only about who needs me, and what I can do for them, but it’s what I want. I want to feel I’m of _use.”_

Edward kicked a piece of driftwood aside and began sweeping the sand in front of him with his foot. “And we’re no longer at war, but I realized that it’s not that the kingdom has no more need of knights. It has no more need of _me.”_ He began to pace up and down the beach. “I’m not great, or wise, or gentle. Next to all my friends, next to everyone else who is working so hard to make a new Derry, what is my life worth? What—what _difference_ does it make?”

Maithurinn was watching him with both eyes open now, squinting underneath his wrinkled brow. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Edward muttered. “I already know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say it makes no sense for me to weigh my life against anyone else’s. That it’s pointless to feel sorry for myself and wallow in feeling useless, because there _is_ something I can do, and once I find it, things will begin falling into place.”

“That is precisely what I was about to say,” Maithurinn agreed, taking a long draw on his pipe.

Edward frowned down at the ground. “I just...I just wish I’d figured all this out sooner. Then I wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to do and be something I couldn’t. Wasted time on things that weren’t meant to be.”

Maithurinn hummed again. “Do you remember what the lanterns at the Festival of Stars stood for?”

“Er.” Edward hesitated, confused. “The lanterns were…the wishes and dreams we wanted to send out into the world, weren’t they?”

Maithurinn raised one grizzled gray eyebrow. “Bet and Adrian, the little cocklebrains. Of course they didn’t explain it to you properly. The lanterns are the wishes and dreams you send out on the boats that you want to give up. To let go of.”

Edward gaped a little. “But how...can it be a good thing to let go of a dream?”

The old witch sighed. “Life is short, boy. There’s so much we simply can’t do in our lifetimes, and too many people cling out of pride and stubbornness to dreams that they’ve long since outgrown.” He smacked the rock next to where he sat. “But here, we know that the sea is meant to weather stone. The stone lets go of its old shape, and grows smoother in the process.” 

Maithurinn picked at something in his beard. “When we let go of old dreams, the ones we’ve learned are no longer meant to be, we’re not giving up. We’re giving ourselves the time and the strength and the space to pay attention to the ones that really matter. The ones that are worth fighting for.” He fixed a beady eye on Edward. “How old are you?”

“Five and twenty,” Edward mumbled.

Maithurinn scoffed. “Boy, do you know how old I am? Five and twenty is nothing. You’ve got every day for the rest of your life to find countless new paths to take, and countless more foolheaded mistakes to learn from. Don’t be so _silly._ ”

And just for a moment, his problems did seem somewhat silly. Edward glanced back at the horses. Mallow was in all the way up to his neck, paddling through the calm waters with ease. Squall was watching him, swishing his tail and slowly stepping further and further in. First one foot, then the other.

_Don’t ask yourself why you wanted to become a knight before. What makes you a knight now?_

Not spending his whole life fighting. Not saving the whole kingdom. Something else.

“I hate helplessness,” Edward said aloud. “I hate feeling powerless and hopeless, and I hate when others have to suffer in that way, too. I want to do something to...to help people so that they can see they’re capable and strong and brave, and so they can go on living well and doing all the things _they_ dream of doing. That’s what I want.”

He gave Maithurinn a sidelong glance. “And I know what you’re going to tell me. That it hasn’t been a waste of time, my needing to figure things out and find my own way, even if it’s taking so much longer than I thought it would. Because that’s what it is—getting lost and realizing you have so much more to learn about the world. Getting your heart broken and working to mend it again. Stumbling into something you never planned, but that just might turn out to be something immense and terrifying and—wonderful. That’s living.”

“Hmm.” Maithurinn closed his eyes serenely and blew a thick smoke ring into the air. “It appears I am a very wise old witch indeed.”

There were boats on the horizon, and Edward turned to watch them. He picked out the silhouette of the one he thought might be Bet’s, keeping his eyes on it as it sailed steadily home. And he remembered, all at once, the day he was knighted—not the cold, heavy blows of the sword on his shoulders, but the warm embrace of his friends as he descended from the dais on shaking legs and they all fell upon him, laughing.

He thought of his father, who had dreamed of distant shores he had never gotten to see; and of his mother in the parlor, singing a song she had made up just for him, turning to smile as he came down the stairs. _Good morning, Edward, my darling boy. What shall you and I do today?_

Edward looked up at the clouds and the daytime moon, took a deep breath, and let it go. Then he whistled Squall and Mallow to him, and mounting his horse, he rode along the shoreline, ready to greet the boats as they landed.

“I could become a horsemaster. Or a training-master,” Edward said, later that night. “I could spend extra hours with the ones who are falling behind, work on all the finer details William and Michael haven’t had enough time to—Richard, are you listening?”

“Mmm,” Richard said muzzily, smiling, even though his eyes were closed.

They were lying on their shared pallet in Bet’s bedroom, Edward’s arm thrown across Richard’s chest, their legs tangled comfortably together. In the first few days they had brought one of their bedrolls in, but it wasn’t long before they gave up pretending they would use it altogether. The bedding was always slightly damp with the sea air, and full of the salty smell of the water, and the warm, familiar smell that Edward couldn’t describe other than _Richard’s,_ and it was a safe corner of the world that was theirs alone. 

“I could start my own vegetable garden,” Edward continued. “Or a garden for medicinal herbs, and anyone could be free to take what they needed. Perhaps Benjamin and Kay could help me find a way to build some kind of charmed structure to house them in, so I could grow them year-round. Year-round, just think! Wouldn’t that be something?”

“It would.” Richard yawned. Edward thought he was going back to sleep, but then Richard rolled to face him, his arm slipping securely around him and his fingers tracing light, loving circles on Edward’s shoulder blade.

Edward was quiet for a while, relishing the warmth and Richard’s knowing touch. “Or I could turn in my shield and study to become a physician,” he murmured. “Take a journeyman’s year and learn from healers and hedgewitches all over the kingdom. I think I would like that very much.” 

“I think that would suit you very well.” Richard kissed Edward’s temple. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think Beverly would accept your shield. You’ve earned it, regardless of what you do next.”

Edward nodded. “I was thinking I’d stay here a while longer. Get to know the sea and the village a little more, as the winter sets in. And then come snowfall, I ride home.”

“To see me,” Richard said.

“To see you,” Edward agreed, reaching up to draw Richard’s face down to his and kiss his mouth—and for a long while, no more words were spoken.

Having grown up with Richard, Edward thought he already knew all there was to know about Richard’s body. But Edward realized now that he had only known it in certain ways; the heavy, comforting weight of Richard’s arm over his shoulders, the scars on Richard’s hands and knees. So many other things were entirely new. The feather-lightness of his hands smoothing down Edward’s sides and up his back and running deep into his hair; his mouth meeting the ridge of Edward’s jaw, the inside of his wrist, the shell of his ear. The way his eyelids dropped contentedly when Edward cupped his face, and the way he shivered with pleasure when Edward’s fingers pressed into his hipbones and the backs of his thighs.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Richard said later, his voice a low, warm hum against the back of Edward’s neck. “And I don’t know if this will help, but...you know when you were saying that you didn’t know how being brave mattered, and that you wanted your life to mean something? I just wanted you to know that, well.”

Richard sounded a little bashful when he went on. “That you’re brave because you came all this way and led us here, and because I think you’d go sailing into a storm if it meant you could save just one person, and because you’re daring to remake your life however long it takes. And—I wanted you to know that you mean something to _me,_ no matter what you do. You could be a sack of flour named Edward and I would love you just the same.”

Edward squirmed, restless and embarrassed, curling up with his knees closer to his chest. “You would not,” he mumbled. “A sack of flour wouldn’t argue back. You like it when I argue with you, don’t deny it.”

“I do,” Richard laughed. “Trickster Goddess help me, somehow I do.”

Edward rolled back over and pressed his wind-chapped lips to Richard’s collarbone. “Good. It’s the only reason why I do it half the time.”

“You little fiend,” Richard laughed, stroking the base of Edward’s neck.

“Call me little again and I’ll duel you at high tide tomorrow.” Edward propped himself up on one elbow, his fingertips running from Richard’s collarbone out to his shoulder. There he found the familiar burn scars from the dragon’s fire, the skin still pink and healing, and Edward traced the raised outlines gently. The Seven all had them; it felt strangely like they were from another life. "You matter to me too," Edward said softly. "You matter to so many people, but also, you matter so much to me. I'm sorry I could never say it before."

"Goose," Richard replied, but he didn't look annoyed at all.

Before they had set off on this adventure, the days at the castle had seemed to Edward to bleed colorlessly into one another. Each one the same as the day before it, just infinite stretches of meaningless time. And now, suddenly, it felt as though there was not enough time. “If you’ll be traveling some of the year,” Edward said, “and I’ll be traveling some of the year, then...we’ll have to find a season or two when we can meet.”

“Of course we will,” Richard said simply. “Wild horses couldn’t keep me from you.” And he sounded so sure that Edward felt nothing more needed to be said.

They had all the time in the world now, Edward realized. They would spend some of the year apart, and some of it together, and it would be good. They could write letters to one another about their work, and send them with Stanley’s falcons. And when they came home, they would tell each other all their stories—sit together and roast chestnuts in the castle’s great fireplace in the winter, and help to train the new foals in the spring. Suddenly, Edward thought, the road home seemed a little brighter. 

Richard’s eyes were closed again, and he looked so soft and sleepy and warm that Edward’s heart turned over with love. Then Richard murmured, “Of course, there is a problem we must tackle first.”

Edward frowned. “What’s that?”

 _“How,”_ Richard sighed despairingly, “how are we going to sing our grand epic of a ballad at the winter feast, if I haven’t found a proper rhyme for your name?”

“Oh, is that all? _I sing you the tale of Richard and Edward,”_ Edward replied dryly. _“They went to the sea, and then they went bedward.”_

Richard threw his head back onto the pillow and laughed and laughed, and Edward felt it, the bright flare of joy in his chest. “My Edward,” Richard said in wonder, smiling and reaching up for him. “Edward, my only, my love.”

\---

Dawn was breaking softly, and the wind coming in from the sea was mild. On the shore, the two knights sat astride their horses and watched the sunlight blossoming a soft autumn gold over the water. When Edward looked up at the clouds, he was reminded anew of how the sky went on forever.

“Well,” Richard said brightly, for he loathed goodbyes. “I haven’t forgotten anything else, have I? Are you sure you don’t need the map for yourself?”

Edward had remembered enough of their map that he had been able to draw a copy of it for Richard and Adrian, for them to take on their journey north. “No, it’s all right,” Edward said. “I can find my way well enough, and I just might make a few unexpected stops on the way home. See where the wind takes me.” Richard nodded. “When you return,” Edward added, his tongue feeling clumsy all of a sudden. “We shall…have much to discuss.”

Mischief appeared on Richard’s face. “Oh, discussion was far from the first thing I had in mind, but if my lord wishes it...?”

Edward scowled. “Hold your tongue, sir, or I will hold it for you.”

Richard grinned even more wickedly. “With what, pray tell?”

“That was hardly even a joke,” Edward complained, and Richard laughed his beloved laugh, and Edward knew. Nothing more to say.

So Edward reached up and kissed him, and when he drew back, he said, “Take care on every road you ride on, and may the nights be clear and full of stars.” Then he put his hand firmly on the back of Richard’s neck, and pressed their foreheads together. “And may the winter winds speed you home to me,” Edward whispered.

Richard smiled and blinked hard, and cleared his throat. “Well!” he said again. “Well. Shall we be off, Tinker my girl?”

Tinker whinnied, and Edward let go, and Richard turned her and nudged her up the sandy hill. As they climbed, Richard began to sing. “I sing you the tale of Sir Edward,” he trilled, “who went riding to battle a roc. But he spared it at last, for his heart was so vast, though we can’t say the same of his c—“

Edward wiped his eyes and laughed. “It’s terrible,” he shouted. “No one will ever want to sing that.”

“It’s a work in progress!” Richard shouted back, glancing over his shoulder with a grin—and Edward rolled his eyes and smiled back, and waved farewell.

\---

“...He was at the top of the hill now, and he paused to wave merrily back at his beloved. Then horse and rider turned, and the knight—who, I might remind my gentle listeners, cut a very handsome figure on horseback—galloped over the hill and disappeared out of sight, sure as the tide rolling out.” The storyteller sat back, letting his words fade away in the early morning air.

“Wait, that’s _all?”_ shrieked a small girl.

“Hush,” her mother said, tweaking her nose. “You’ll waken the dead with your shrilling!”

The knight who had been telling the story grinned at the children clustered around him. “That was a long one, wasn’t it! My throat is parched. Give us the ale, there, Ida, if you please—and my saddlebag, Asta, thank you.”

 _“I_ liked the part where they fought the troll,” one girl said with clear, delicious delight.

“I liked that they kissed at the end,” a small boy sighed, resting his chin contentedly in his palms.

The first girl who had spoken huffed impatiently. “But did the two knights meet again, at the midwinter feast at the castle?” she persisted.

The knight looked across the gentle, misty waters of the Great Lake, where the winter sun was rising. “Do you know, I don’t know yet,” he said. “I suppose there’s a little more adventuring I have to do before I find out the ending to this particular story.”

“Will you tell us when you do?” the boy asked.

“Of course.” The knight grinned and ruffled his hair. “I’ll come back and tell you all about it.”

The older man with kind eyes who had been listening to the storytelling stepped forward, leaning on his walking-stick. “Rihhi, son,” he said, holding out his hand. “The caravan is all set. Are you ready?”

Sir Richard squinted up at the sky again. It looked like it might snow today, he thought. And the road before him led home; to his friends, and to a warm bed, and to the place where someone was waiting for him.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I’m currently going through some stuff with my writing process, and thinking about who I want to be as a writer, and what I want to do next. That said, this fic was really difficult for me, not just because it turned out to be way more personal than I ever intended—but because in rebuilding my writing process, the actual act of writing has taken me so much more effort than it used to. 
> 
> Not that I’m looking for like, a pass if this turns out to be bad, but saying this more just to remind myself that this took a frickin’ long time and it was so SO ugly in the beginning, but I didn’t give up and I fleshed it out and polished it, and it was excruciatingly hard but I did it anyway. Boo-yah; take that, brain frog, etc.
> 
> 2\. Re: side characters: Cassandra is Sandy, Bet is Betty, and Adrian is going to meet Don at Samhain in the end and they are going to fall madly in love. Maithurinn is Maturin, but with a fake Gaelic-inspired spelling. Richard’s birth parents are named Towse and Magda, because “Tozier” and “Maggie.” On that note, Richard’s Family name, “Rihhi,” is just the Germanic origin of the name Richard. “Saescill” is the Old English word for seashell. Names are hard.
> 
> 3\. Okay, THE SONGS. Writing the songs was a lot of fun, but also I screamed many times. One of the funny tavern songs Richard sings is essentially my fantasy version of the pre-chorus of “Friday” by Rebecca Black, and another one is the fantasy version of “WAP.” The Earnest Songs, however, were unfortunately all me.
> 
> 4\. Thank you to Meg for helping me troubleshoot The Big Egg, and to Ceece for unfailingly yet unwittingly encouraging me while I cooked The Big Egg. She’s done, fucking finally. Sending you both omelettes and egg tarts and yards and yards of meringue.
> 
> And to you, too, if you’ve read this—thank you. It means a lot. Happy new year, and I wish you all the kindness and love and magic you deserve. <3


End file.
